National Nurses Week 2015

Celebrating National Nurses Week 2015

At the height of the Crimean War between Britain and Russia, the mortality rate of British solders brought to the Scutari military hospital in Istanbul was over forty percent.

A British nurse there came up with the idea of using statistical analysis to prove the needless deaths caused by unsanitary conditions.  Her name was Florence Nightingale.

Some 6,000 soldiers died at Scutari during the two year long war, mostly from cholera, but Florence Nightingale’s ingenuity and sanitation reforms saved untold lives, both in Crimea and in the many decades since.

Florence had been an unpaid superintendent of a London “establishment for gentlewomen during illness” just a year before Britain’s secretary of war dispatched her and 38 other nurses to Scutari. The fact that a Victorian woman like her would know anything about statistics was highly improbable, since education of that level was reserved for men. But her father insisted that his two daughters learn Latin, Greek and mathematics, so she became conversant with the new statistical analysis techniques of the time.

Florence Nightingale became an innovator in the collection, tabulation, interpretation, and graphical display of descriptive statistics. The polar-area diagram (or pie chart) she developed during the war was among the first uses of diagnostic analytics in healthcare.

She’s known as “The Lady of the Lamp”, but at TeleTracking we call her the first “Nurse Superhero.” Her push for reform in the British military healthcare system brought with it a respect for the nursing profession that remains to this day.

Each year, National Nurses week ends on May 12th, the day that Ms. Nightingale was born in Florence, Italy in 1820.  Each year, TeleTracking honors and celebrates nurses with its “Super RN” T-shirt giveaway because we understand firsthand the impact that nursing has today.  That’s the primary reason we employ nearly 30 clinicians as consultants, client success managers, implementation managers, and sales executives.

They offer our clients the same empathy they had with their patients.  They work tirelessly to improve the daily operational management of some 900 hospitals in the U.S. and abroad.

We address the value of nursing often in this column because we have come to appreciate their contributions in unique ways.

We’re always looking for “Nurse Hero” stories. If you have one to share, please contact us at marketing@teletracking.com.  And claim your Super RN t-shirt by being one of the first 100 nurses to register by clicking here.  (No gimmicks or strings attached). It’s just a small way of showing that we appreciate you!

Happy Nurses Week!
-Nanne Finis

Ms. Finis leads TeleTracking’s seasoned team of former hospital nurses and administrators in helping clients apply Lean Six Sigma methods and technology to process redesign and workflow automation. She joined TeleTracking in 2013 after more than a decade with Joint Commission Resources (JCR), a not-for-profit affiliate of The Joint Commission.