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.