Florence nightingale photo

When Greta Westwood was 4 years old, she read a children’s book about Victorian nurse Florence Nightingale. Decades later, she still remembers being transfixed by the enduring image of the “Lady with the Lamp.” Westwood herself would go on to a distinguished nursing career of her own, starting out as a student orthopedic nurse in 1978. “From day one of putting the uniform on, I’ve never looked back,” she recalls. Although she left Britain’s National Health Service in 2017 after nearly 40 years, Westwood has recently returned to her local hospital in Portsmouth, in the south of England, to help with the U.K.’s That early image of Florence Nightingale, tending to wounded soldiers in the darkness with her lamp, has endured for so many nurses, for so many years, and takes on renewed significance as May 12 marks the 200th anniversary of Nightingale’s birth. It also marks International Nurses’ Day, commemorated in Nightingale’s honor. With nurses around the world Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820, to a wealthy aristocratic family in Italy, and grew up in England. As a teenager, she believed that she had heard a call from God encouraging her to help the sick and poor and felt a strong desire to become a nurse—although the profession was not seen as a respectable job at the time. Victorian social conventions also meant that women were generally expected to stay at home and run household affairs, not pursue careers; Nightingale turned down multiple marriage proposals because she...

12-05-2012 Photo gallery Exactly a century ago, the Florence Nightingale Medal was instituted by the ICRC. It is the highest international distinction that can be awarded to a nurse. On the occasion of International Nurses Day (12 May – also Florence Nightingale's birthday), the ICRC looks back at 100 years of nursing excellence from around the world. • • Haiti, 2010. Mme Augsburger, who presides over the commission that awards the Florence Nightingale Medal, speaks at a ceremony in Port-au-Prince, where three volunteers of the Haitian Red Cross received the Medal, in recognition for their work following the Haiti Earthquake in January 2010. The exceptional awarding of the Medal in 2010 marked the 100th anniversary of the death of Florence Nightingale, as well as recognizing the incredible body of work of Haitian Red Cross nurses. © ICRC "The Florence Nightingale Medal, the highest distinction that can be awarded to a nurse, represents the professional body of work of all those nurses and nursing aides that have been working for many years under very difficult circumstances – in situations of conflict, natural disaster and other emergencies. I am very honoured to preside over this Commission and I hope that this award will continue to recognize for many years to come the unrelenting work of nurses and nursing aides in extraordinary situations such as armed conflict. I think it is important for the ICRC to have greater access to nurses in countries that don't have the infra...