Year 2010 is the International Year of the Nurse and it also marks the centennial year of the death of the founder of modern nursing — Florence Nightingale (1820-1910). She was an English nurse, writer and statistician. She came to prominence during the Crimean War for her pioneering work in nursing, and was dubbed “The Lady with the Lamp” after her habit of making rounds at night to tend injured soldiers. Nightingale laid the foundation of professional nursing with the establishment, in 1860, of her nursing school at St Thomas’s Hospital in London.

All nurses know who Florence Nightingale is. She is often referred to as the mother of nursing or the founder of modern nursing.

“The Lady with the Lamp” entered the field of nursing in 1845, even though her upper-class British family disapproved. During the Crimean War, Nightingale lobbied the British government on behalf of the terrible hospital conditions for wounded soldiers in Turkey.