FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE - FOUNDER OF THE NURSING PROFESSION

BIJELJINA, AUGUST 12 /SRNA/ - English nurse Florence Nightingale /1820–1910/, the founder of the nursing profession, whose birthday, May 12, is observed as International Nurses Day, died on August 13, 1910.

During the Crimean War in the mid-19th century, she organised hospitals with the British expeditionary force and significantly reformed medical services and the care of wounded and sick soldiers.

As a result, the mortality rate in British field hospitals fell from 40 per cent to just two per cent.

She opened the first nursing school, and her students, who treated Serbian soldiers during the First World War, helped establish a similar school in Belgrade after the war. The school’s first class of nurses graduated in 1924.