esponsibility to act ethically in their professional endeavours, without the need for close supervision or monitoring by superiors. NightingaleÆs vision for nursing was that professional responsibility was inextricably linked in the life of a nurse with a sense of moral duty. In accepting the mantle of responsibility which this entailed, a sense of moral agency was conferred upon those in the profession. It was NightingaleÆs highest and most fundamental aim as a nurse to take personal responsibility for the prevention of suffering.
A second implication of virtue theory upon nursing practice is related to NightingaleÆs specialisation û the maintenance of quality environmental health standards. Nightingale advocated for correct, scientific-based sanitation methods early in her career, although the setting of the Crimean War was not the ideal prototype in which to practice such strident environmental measures. As Grant (2002) reports,
öan almost total lack of hygiene exacerbated matters. The soldiers, Nightingale noted, were able to wash only once in eighty days, resulting in `Fever, Cholera, Gangrene, Lice, Bugs, Fleas--& may be Erysipelas [a streptococcal infection causing inflammation],' all of which quickly spread by the sharing `of one sponge among many wounds.' (Grant, 2002, 11)
It was whilst working within this intolerable setting that Florence Nightingale developed the environmental health ideas which she would later implement in civilian hospitals. To promote rapid patient recovery and to control the risk of infection, Florence Nightingale (1869) considered environment a core phenomenon in her model of nursing. She stressed the importance of developing sanitary codes for hospitals and identified five factors for nurses to consider in optimizing the physical environment of the ill person: pure air, pure water, cleanliness, light, and efficient drainage. Selanders (1993) called Nightingale an ...