As we celebrate Florence Nightingale’s birthday on May 12th - during International Nurses Week, 2009 - we are actively preparing for the 2010 International Year of the Nurse - the historic Centennial of the death of Nightingale [1820-1910].

The seeds of my dream to honour this Centennial began with an opportunity I had to participate in the 1996 “UN Tribute to Florence Nightingale at Scutari,” convened during that year at the United Nations Human Settlements Summit in Istanbul, Turkey.  “Scutari” is the old name of the Barracks - now called “Selimiye” - that still stands in Istanbul, where Nightingale began her famous work in the 1850s.

Prior to this event, I knew that she was the “Lady of the Lamp” whose career began with great sacrifice during the Crimean War, succeeding to save the lives of many wounded soldiers and, later, to found modern nursing.

But, as I prepared for this opportunity to speak at this UN Tribute, I learned how Nightingale had accomplished much more than this and that her lesser-known accomplishments could have great relevance for us, in our time.  Later, returning to graduate school, I became a Nightingale scholar, studying, in-depth, the broader aspects of her global works that were not yet well-known. 

In modern China, India, Japan, Africa, the South Pacific and the Arab world, in Turkey, the Caribbean and all of the Americas, Nightingale is widely remembered.  As a nurse, she challenged other nurses and leaders on every continent to raise the standards of practical concern for the health of humanity.  For Nightingale, nursing was a personal and worldwide service of caring and widely communicating her knowledge, skill and commitment.  For example, she was a consummate networker who connected with people who shared her concerns for the health of humanity.  More than 14,000 letters, in her own handwriting, remain in collections around the world.

In the early 2000s, I joined other Nightingale scholars and several key friends to ask ourselves, “what would Nightingale have done with email, the Internet  and satellite uplink?”

We answered by creating the Nightingale Initiative for Global Health (NIGH) in 2004.  First, we decided to call for a 2010 International Year of the Nurse to widely honor the 2010 Nightingale Centennial.  And, we asked ourselves, “what could we also do on January 1st, 2011?  To remember Nightingale’s full legacy?  To address global health issues as she had done?  With our own commitments to advocating for human health on a global scale, and in a sustainable, environmentally- conscious ways?”

Since then, we have collaborated with a growing team of people and organizations from around the world, to develop NIGH as “a grassroots, nurse-inspired movement to increase global awareness about the priority of health and to empower nurses and concerned citizens to stand for a healthy world everywhere.”

To accomplish this, we have developed several interrelated initiatives:

1) The Nightingale Declaration for a Healthy World - an online opportunity to make your individual commitment to achieving a healthy world with your knowledge, skills and talents.

2) An innovative website - www.NightingaleDeclaration.net - also featuring Global News stories about nurses and health issues around the world.

3) A series of three United Nations Resolutions - proposed to be adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2009:

          • UN Resolution to Mobilize Public Opinion Towards a Healthy World by 2020

         • UN Resolution to endorse the 2010 International Year of the Nurse (as the launching year)

         • UN Resolution for a United Nations Decade for a Healthy World, 2011-2020 (the Bicentennial of Nightingale’s birth)

To learn more about these proposed UN Resolutions, see:

http://www.nightingaledeclaration.net/moving-health-to-first-place/ 

By Deva-Marie Beck, PhD, RN

Click here to learn more about Deva-Marie Beck.