Nightingalism: haunting nursing history.
This paper is concerned with determining how 'Florence Nightingale' functions in discourse about nurses and nursing. It argues that the nursing profession needs to recognise that the name 'Florence Nightingale' serves a political function that, even in the 1990s, is still used to construct certain truths about nursing praxis. More specifically, it argues that if the nursing profession wants to know how history affects its practice then we need to question the whole system of knowledge created about nurses and nursing through a reliance on a formation such as Nightingalism.
Australian Red Cross Blood Service, Hobart, Tasmania. tbuchanan@arcbs.redcross.org.au
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D001315:Australia; D004739:England; D049672:History, 19th Century; D006801:Humans; D016294:Models, Nursing; D009718:Nurse Administrators / Q000266:history*; D010687:Philosophy, Nursing; D011057:Politics