Tweeting Nightingale, Part Two

In my previous post, I discussed the cultural importance of Twitter and five top Florence Nightingale-related tweets. Before proceeding to my next discussion, a historical analysis of a much-quoted Nightingale quote, a brief introduction to Twitter is in order for those who don’t know or understand the medium.

A Twitter primer

A tweet is a short burst of text—140 characters or less—which anyone with a Twitter account can send via the Internet. It’s a bit like text-messaging the world, with the abbreviated language typical of such communication. I can perch in a “tree” and tweet to the people who choose to follow my tweets. (By way of introduction, every user includes a brief profile.) I can aim a tweet to a specific person in their “tree” by starting my tweet with their name, after first entering the @ symbol, or I can tweet to numerous persons perched in the same tree by entering the # symbol and the name of the “tree” or community.

Tweeting is a bit like text-messaging the world.

It should not be surprising to know that the community #florencenightingale exists, as do #nursinghistory, #twitternurses, #nursesweek, #nurse, and so on. Sometimes, a group of nurses will fly over to a particular tree at a prearranged time and, as they do on #NurChat, all tweet to each other, promoting professional development very much in the spirit of Florence Nightingale. You can also tweet others’ tweets (retweets) and add pictures or media links to tweets. Not surprisingly, I am @alexattewell and I tweet from a kapok tree in the Mexican jungle.

The historical Florence Nightingale quote I mention above and the most popular Nightingale quote on Twitter is “I attribute my success to this—I never gave or took any excuse.” Short quotes are made for Twitter. In fact, they are the currency of Twitter in the sense that anything good gets retweeted and goes viral. Nightingale’s words are right up there; there is an endless quantity of her quotes on Twitter. Because she’s very quotable, she is also very tweetable. I got bored counting how many hundreds of her quotes there are on Twitter, so, to conduct a little survey, I used the first 100 I found and discovered that this single quote accounted for 57 percent.

In-depth tweet analysis

When Florence Nightingale put these words to paper with her steel-nibbed pen and black ink, she was addressing them to her cousin Hilary who, at the time, was helping her with secretarial work related to nurse education. Nightingale provided her cousin a humorous account of being nearly deluged with water because of bad plumbing in the hotel where she was staying, but added that it wasn’t actually so funny in view of the freezing weather. As a result of being “drowned,” as Nightingale put it, she had become ill.

In trying to get to the bottom of the problem, four of the nearest and dearest men in her life had words with the hotel works supervisor, but they were fobbed off with the excuse that it was caused by frost, so nobody was really to blame. When eventually Nightingale herself got hold of the supervisor, she said it was like “reenacting the Crimea on a small scale.” The man confessed that the problem was, indeed, the result of bad workmanship and had nothing to do with the frost! Hence, never taking an excuse. Another thing I like about the quote—“I attribute my success to this—I never gave or took any excuse”—is that Nightingale openly acknowledges her success, and in doing so, also conveys the fact that she is a success in a man’s world.

Today, researchers can view the quote and the eight-page letter it comes from in the British Library’s manuscript reading room, but it’s easier to find the quote reproduced in her biographies. Easier yet on Twitter. Florence Nightingale would be dumbfounded to know that, 142 years after writing a private letter to her cousin Hilary, a portion of it has gone viral on the Internet. I actually do wonder if the British Library staff members are aware that they are holding the source of this most famous of tweets.

In early May, around the time of Nurses Week, there was a peak of Florence Nightingale-quote tweeting and retweeting between nurses and non-nurses, and all permutations thereof. I have chosen to showcase a tweet of the quote by Shawna Allietta, a nursing student from Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia. She retweeted it from a #nursesweek tweet by the publisher of her nursing textbooks.

Note that the tweet, as with many things broadcast via Twitter, is not 100 percent accurate. If you want to see precisely what Florence Nightingale actually said, see page 35 of my book of Florence Nightingale quotes.

Finally, I thank Anja K. Peters, a German nursing history PhD candidate—to clarify, she is German and she is studying German nursing history—for welcoming me recently to Twitter as a fellow Florence Nightingale fanatic.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.

Tweeting Nightingale, Part One

Years ago, I had a chat with an eminent and charismatic British nursing historian, the late Monica E. Baly, PhD, RGN, about a controversy in the press over the discovery of some Florence Nightingale letters. I’d expected Baly to have a critical insight, but still she surprised me with her reaction. “Froth” she said, as she made a dismissive hand gesture. I was too taken aback to argue, but I could have taken the line of one of my university professors, John Vincent, who said that newspapers are one of a historian’s best sources of information.

So what on earth would Baly make of Twitter? Why should we take Twitter seriously? It’s interesting, up-to-date, surprising, diverse, and humorous—sometimes several of these at the same time—and, by the way, the spelling is horrible.

I would venture that the qualities I mention here make Twitter an ideal source of cultural information. I have no idea how well Twitter is being archived; it’s only six years old, and it may be too soon to say. But I have no doubt that future nursing historians will find it very useful, apart from the spelling mistakes and the errors that come from repetition. In Part Two of this post, to follow a few days from now, I focus on a case in point, a Florence Nightingale quote.

Alex’s top five Florence Nightingale tweets

Admittedly, I had rather too much time on my hands while ill last week. Trawling through old tweets, I collected a medley of them to illustrate my point.

Tweet 1: I actually found out something new about Florence Nightingale, thanks to a tweet posted by @mryap with a link to a video about Florence Nightingale’s important contribution to statistics. At 1:03 on the video, you can see some basic statistical tables drawn up by Florence as a 9-year-old child. It’s enlightening to see this early evidence of what became one of Nightingale’s most important achievements, the pioneering of data visualization.

Tweet 2: I find Twitter endlessly fascinating for the insights the medium’s users provide into the evolving gender politics of nursing. The tweet by @overmanlymurse—“Florence Nightingale? Never heard if [sic] him”—uses humor to pose an interesting question about the relevance of Nightingale to the new breed of male nurses who identify themselves as “murses.”

Tweet 3: I am a student of images of Florence Nightingale, so I was surprised to discover an entirely new category of image—Florence Nightingale tattoos—in a tweet received by @Tatted_Nurse. For your information, the tattoo image is based on the 1856 photograph of Nightingale that was commissioned by Queen Victoria after the former’s return from the Crimean War.

Tweet 4: I had previously read about the so-called Florence Nightingale-Mary Seacole controversy (the Twitter link is to Seacole’s online autobiography), but reading tweets convinced me that the controversy is something like a Punch and Judy show, where two personalities are made to fight for the amusement of the crowd. This cartoon by Kate Beaton, @beatonna on Twitter, perfectly captures the essence of a Punch and Judy show, while utterly failing to represent historical facts. If Twitter comments are anything to judge by, nurses do not view the controversy as a big deal. Neither do I. For the record, I made a donation to the Seacole statue appeal years ago, and I see no conflict inherent in celebrating the achievements of both women.

Tweet 5: Finally, I end with a charming anagram of Florence Nightingale, tweeted by @zeniusenglish, a language school in Jakarta. Instead of highlighting a tweet on Nightingale in German, Spanish or Japanese, which are among the most popular languages in which to tweet Nightingale (so far as I can tell), I have chosen a tweet in Indonesian, which shows that Florence Nightingale represents not just the English nation, but the English language as a whole to the non-English speaking world. Oh, and here is the anagram: “flit on cheering angel.”

You can find the original tweets among the "favorites” on my Twitter profile at @alexattewell. And remember to watch for Part Two of "Tweeting Nightingale," coming soon!

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.

Still lighting the way

It’s around 90 degrees but with a refreshing breeze as I sit at my desk, looking out over an expanse of fresh water of the Laguna Bacalar. I hear continuous bird chatter, mainly gentle and melodious, interspersed with the racket of chachalacas and the occasional squawks of passing green parrots. I am keeping my eye on a pair of attractive orange-hooded orioles nesting nearby. Here in tropical Mexico, London, my home town, seems a long, long way away. But I picture perfectly the scene unfolding in Westminster Abbey as the annual Florence Nightingale Commemoration Service gets under way.

Westminster Abbey, site of annual Florence Nightingale
Commemoration Service.

The atmosphere of the Abbey is something else when it is full of nurses; it feels almost tangible. There is something calming about the feel of the space and the smell of the ancient stone but, once a year, when it is full of nurses, a palpable excitement rises as the organ music begins and the procession makes its way through the nave.

As I am so far away, I can only imagine the scene, but today I had the privilege of receiving this year’s Abbey address from the speaker, Mark Bostridge, whose major biography Florence Nightingale: The Making of an Icon was published five years ago. I have known Mark for many years and was fortunate to help him in the process of his research. His words from the Abbey address seem typical of him, at once eloquent, understated, and based on deep scholarship and awareness of his audience.

He starts by telling how an infirm Florence Nightingale came to sit in Westminster Abbey in 1879 for a memorial service to one of her heroes, Sir John Lawrence, who was her ally in health promotion in India, and he goes on to talk about how Nightingale herself has been hero-worshipped. During the course of his address, he cites many reasons why Nightingale is still relevant in terms of the organization of health care, the design of hospitals, the clarity of her vision and expression, the importance of nurses speaking out to ensure the safety of their patients (which Nightingale would have supported), and the continuing relevance of nursing as an art.

I was particularly struck by the manner in which Mark Bostridge distinguished between the myth and the continuing value of Nightingale’s legacy, as he shine the light of the mythical lamp back on the nurses assembled in the Abbey’s nave and the choir: “In a moment, you will watch the time-honoured tradition of a lamp, representing the one used by Nightingale at Scutari, being processed to the High Altar. We don’t, in fact, know whether Florence Nightingale attached much importance to the system of lighting she employed at her hospital during the Crimean War, though, of course, it cemented her popular image as the Lady with the Lamp. But I’d ask you this evening to look at that lamp, not as a symbol perpetuating a simplistic, outdated legend, but as an image of the best of modern nursing, shining the light of humanity into some of the darker and lonelier corners of human experience.”

At that point, David Wright, a lead nurse in the cancer service for teenagers at Christie Hospital in Manchester, proceeded to carry the gleaming genie-style lamp to the altar, escorted by a group of student nurses from De Montfort University in Leicester. I am sure the experience will be a great boost to their professional careers, 158 years after Florence Nightingale carried the cylindrical Turkish lantern in the wards of the Barrack Hospital at Uskudar in Istambul.

The service ends with the uplifting sounds of the organ and, as the people leave the Abbey, they may brush shoulders with Florence Nightingale’s closest living relative or this year’s British nurse of the year. There follows 10 minutes of the most intense professional networking you can imagine. I don’t think there is an iPhone app capable of keeping pace with the rapid and impromptu meetings and exchanges; it is a once-a-year experience for many fortunate senior nurses and a once-in-a-lifetime experience for nurses who have come from across the globe.

The service is organized by The Florence Nightingale Foundation, the purpose of which is to support nurses and midwives through scholarships and mentoring. As you can see from the symbolic roles in the Abbey service, the foundation also has a key role in promoting pride in nursing and recognizing the work of practicing nurses. The foundation is now a stand-alone organization, but its origins are in the National Florence Nightingale Memorial Committee for Great Britain and, more than 80 years ago, similar national committees in countries across the world were linked to the Florence Nightingale International Foundation (FNIF) in Geneva. The FNIF is still very much in existence under the umbrella of the International Council of Nurses.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International. 

Interpreting an icon

I had the privilege of working for nearly two decades at the Florence Nightingale Museum in St. Thomas’ Hospital in London. Contrary to many public perceptions of museums, the Nightingale Museum was a lively and, at times, hectic place, with a constant whirl of services to the visiting public and, behind the scenes, development of exhibition and education projects that involved historical research and planning. There were frequent discoveries of new material connected to Nightingale that required careful investigation and assessment before being communicated to the wider public. Only rarely was there time to sit down and actually read a book, and yet, like curators everywhere, my colleagues and I were required to know exactly what the significant books had to say on the subject. 

In my current work as a translator, I have the luxury of more time to read, think, and write, and I am very pleased to have the opportunity to write this Reflections on Nursing Leadership blog about Florence Nightingale, reflecting on the significance of her legacy today and the way in which her legacy is understood in different parts of the world.

With my background in museums and culture, I am interested in the global culture of nursing and the meaning of nursing icons for the modern world. It is clear to me that Nightingale has assumed quite different meanings at different times and places. It is probably needless to say that Nightingale had quite a different meaning in Meiji Japan compared to postapartheid South Africa. The reasons for these differences fascinate me, and I have continued to collect impressions and notes—from my time with the museum, from my work as a historical-tour leader and, latterly, as a translator living in Mexico.

Nightingale used to collect notes during the course of her work, from her direct experience or from the work and research of others, whose opinions she evaluated carefully. Some of her most important writings had “Notes” in the title, namely Notes on Hospitals, Notes on Nursing and Notes on Lying-In Institutions. These works, therefore, represented her accumulated thoughts on a particular topic and, in the case of Notes on Hospitals, the book went through a considerable period of refinement, being published in various editions. With this blog I aim to do something similar, to publish my own “Notes on Nightingale” on a wide variety of topics where I perceive that her views have particular relevance.

Last year, I authored a book, Illuminating Florence: Finding Nightingale's Legacy in Your Practice, in which I link quotes by Nightingale to nursing management, leadership, and theory. In that book, published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International, I also highlight the relevance of Nightingale’s vision and legacy to modern-day nurses. I have always taken a practical and nondoctrinaire approach to Nightingale’s relevance today. Modern nurses across the world do continue to take inspiration from her life’s work, her writings, and philosophy, and this should be the true measure of her iconic status, rather than using the image of Florence Nightingale somewhat in the manner of a plaster saint.

From my knowledge of the archives and my understanding of Nightingale’s legacy, nurses today are only now on the verge of a much deeper appreciation of her relevance. I look forward to playing my part in increasing awareness of Nightingale and helping to inspire nurses in their excellent and valuable work of caring for patients and improving the health of the people of the world.

For Reflections on Nursing Leadership (RNL), published by the Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International.