Florence Nightingale Today: Healing, Leadership, Global Action by Barbara Montgomery Dossey, Louise C. Selanders, Deva-Marie Beck, and Alex Attewell. Silver Spring, Md: American Nurses Association; 2005. 367 pages, paperback, #$34.95 list/$27.95 ANA members.
These authors present a consummate text about the pertinence of Florence Nightingale's nursing career to current nursing practice and healthcare in general, particularly in relation to healing, leadership, and global action. The central thesis is the relationship between Nightingale's groundbreaking practice and today's practice world. The authors use a variety of approaches to assist the reader to visualize the connective relevance across the eras of nursing and healthcare. For example, strategies such as photos, original writings, period artifacts, and narrative commentaries portray historical elements of Nightingale's practice. Concurrently, the authors skillfully explore, analyze, and communicate the connections of Nightingale's distinguished attributes to today's practice world. Further, the authors assert that Nightingale's "practical and visionary" work continuously serves to globally found, guide, and "rejuvenate" today's nurses and healthcare. Throughout, the authors emphasize Nightingale's spirituality as an intimate essence that permeated all facets of her life. In all, the text addresses readers from all disciplines and affiliations with healthcare activities.
To glean lessons from history, the authors used the scholarly approach of interpretive biography. They studied Nightingale's documents and narratives to find her self-stories (ie, lived experiences and epiphanies) within the contextual factors of her times-described as an unraveling process. The authors interpreted their findings to discover meaning to situations and decisive events in Nightingale's lived experiences. Further, the authors sought vital meaning from Nightingale's work and their interpretations for contemporary nursing and healthcare at large.
The first 3 parts of the book reflect the 3 tenets of healing, leadership, and global action. Part 4 consists of Nightingale's formal letters to her nurses and an 1893 essay. Part 5 is an Epilogue with a travelogue, "Pilgrimage to Scutari," references, and resource appendices.
Each of the first 3 parts has chapters and subheadings. For example, Part 2 (Leadership) consists of chapters about Nightingale's philosophy of nursing, social change and leadership as dynamic forces, Nightingale's Environmental Adaptation Theory as leadership, and Nightingale's use of her artifacts to represent her leadership legacy and style. In addition, each chapter concludes with a Pentimento that uses photos, tables, and narrative text to convey Nightingale's own life stories. These life stories are seen as opportunities to discover Nightingale's "history and legacy" for modern nursing. Finally, each chapter concludes with a series of questions about directions for future research and reflections on each chapter's tenet.
The book provides an extensive reference list, glossary of terms, overview of interpretive biography, and description of resources (eg, the Nightingale Museum, collected works, books, Internet resources, Nightingale Initiative for Global Health).
Excellent tables condense major text information for easy reference. A few examples include descriptions of total healing environments (from Nightingale's writings and then from modern holistic and integral perspectives), patterns and descriptors from Nightingale's 13 formal letters, summary of a concept analysis of Nightingale as nursing's foundation philosopher, Nightingale's flow of leadership to constituents, and comparison of Nightingale's canons and modern practice concepts. Figures clearly depict concepts such as holism from both a multidimensional perspective and from Nightingale's perspective. Abundant pictures illustrate Nightingale's visage, environment, demography, and historical achievements. There are a number of replications of archival documents such as a diagram of mortality causes among soldiers and official written reports. There is a full index.
A unique feature is the dynamic front cover that pictorially conveys Nightingale as an historic figure who continues to preside over contemporary enaction of the 3 tenets: healing, leadership, and global action. A helpful feature is the large chapter numbers and the repetition of each chapter's title in the right-hand margin of every other page to guide the reader.
Individually, each author contributed devotion to and expertise in the information sources and perspectives that guided this rich book. Dossey previously authored an illustrated biography of Nightingale and contributes her renown knowledge, experience, and writing in holistic nursing. Selanders, an active nursing educator in nursing theory and nursing history, contributes her academic expertise and enthusiasm toward furthering Nightingale's principles and perspectives. Beck, International Director of the Nightingale Initiative for Global Health in Washington, DC, and Ottawa, Canada, works to engage healthcare workers and others to universally adopt health as a priority initiative. Attewell, Director of The Florence Nightingale Museum in London, England, offers firsthand immersion in tangible artifacts, library collections, photos, and letters that lend official confirmation to this book. Together, this team melds resources to present accurate and authentic original documentation and portrayals of Nightingale's writings, intentions, and vision.
The foremost strength for this engaging work is the team of authors who passionately gathered, analyzed, and scholarly interpreted such a substantial number of Nightingale's works. The authors compared timely and practical parallels between Nightingale's and today's healthcare eras. Such distinct attention cements Nightingale's legacy and personalizes invaluable connections for the reader.
This team of authors evidenced their passion and detailed scholarly attention to a superlative compilation of Nightingale's original works. They interpreted those works to construct an encompassing book that will enduringly meet the interests and information needs of novice to accomplished nurse readers and healthcare players in general. The authors bring fresh information and perspectives that portray the tenets of healing, leadership, and global action-permeated with spirituality-across historical eras to the forefront of contemporary healthcare practice.
Dot Baker, EdD, MS(N), RN, CS
Associate Professor, Nursing, Wilmington College, Georgetown, Del