Wellsprings
Wellsprings -
Every year, we celebrate National Nurses Week around the time of Florence Nightingale’s birthday. That birthday is this week: May 12th, when we celebrate International Nursing Day. We’ve heard the stories: how she created the modern profession of nursing in England and the US. But what prompted her to take on this career – especially in her time, one most unbecoming a young English lady of means?
Answering the Call
According to many sources, Nightingale was a Unitarian. At age of 16 or 17 (depending on who you read), she is reported to have experienced a “call from God” – to care for the sick and alleviate suffering. Expectations contradicted that call: she was to marry well and assume the normal duties of a well-to-do British lady. As her mother and sister were opposed to the idea of her becoming a nurse, sources suggest she kept her vision a secret from her family for some years.
Finally, at the age of 30, she encountered the Lutheran order of Deaconesses in Kaiserwerth, Germany (metro Dusseldorf today). They had created this idea of Diakonie (service) by women through education and care of the sick. She persuaded her family to create an annual allowance for her, so she was independent of needing marriage. She then went to Kaiserwerth to study nursing and hospital management for four months. Next, she spent time with the Sisters of Mercy in Paris, before returning to London to become the Superintendent of Sick Gentlewomen in Distressed Circumstances in 1853 in London. From there in October of 1854, she took a group of 38 nurses to the Crimean War – and the rest is history.
The Foundations of Our Own Present
Interestingly, that same order, the Sisters of Mercy, opened the first hospital in Chicago in 1852. The Kaiserwerth Deaconness nurses came to Chicago to open one of the two hospitals that merged to become Northwestern Memorial Hospital. Most of our present hospitals in Chicago had their roots in various religious traditions of service.
Today, we couch Nightingale’s story as a remarkable woman who refused to be constrained by her gender to change history. However, I don’t hear much discussion of the “call from God” idea. Or, that she was trained by people who also had a religious calling.
Our training is so heavily predicated on science, evidence, medications, devices and diagnosis. Ethics is a part of our training: but do we go further? Most of the people I meet at Northwestern Memorial tell me that they do what they do because of a wish to “help people.” Once upon a time, the discussion of calling and our beliefs and values would have been a regular part of our training. We would have known the wellsprings of thousands of years of thought and debate that underpin why we act the way we do. We would have been trained in skills to help us face questions at the crux of existence: suffering, mortality and compassion.
Time to come out of the spiritual closet?
To speak the unspeakable of what drives each of us?
I think many of us are the opposite of Mother Nightingale today – open about our nursing and closeted about our spiritual beliefs – what calls us to this marvelous work and sustains us through it. We express what drives us through actions, and never discuss it. We may never even think about it, much less study it.
Perhaps, it is time we are not only taught how to assess and diagnose, but to wonder at the miracle of it all.
Spirit – inspiration – passionate commitment – daily practice – these are the wellsprings of our professions in Nursing and Medicine. My fantasy is that we may open up a diverse and inclusive conversation about the multiple threads that shape us, drive us, call us – instead of limiting that dialogue only to chaplains.
May we, on this International Nurses Day, seek to know ourselves and who we are in this work. May our wellsprings help us be strong. May we see the beautiful children of the universe whom we serve in all of their complexity and need.