The Legacy of Florence Nightingale's Environmental Theory: Nursing Research Focusing on the Impact of Healthcare Environments

Abstract

Evidence-based design, literature review, nursing.

Nursing and music: Considerations of Nightingale’s environmental philosophy and phenomenology

“…Benner and Wrubel's emphasis on the integrated person informs our reflection on how the nurse can approach and use music. We intend to suggest that both Nightingale's environmental philosophy and the concept of lived experience as central in phenomenology, are deep within this holistic, caring/healing nursing tradition and ideally positioned to facilitate the nurse's understanding and use of music as a healing intervention (Benner & Wrubel, ; Bolton, ; Swanson & Wojnar, ; van Manen, ; Zborowsky, ). We do not exclude other philosophical approaches.…”

“…Nightingale emphasized the holistic totality of the person within the context of an environment optimized for health, or a return to health (Bolton, ; Lobo, ; Nightingale, ). Her philosophy included such environmental influences as the importance of sound (Porter, ; Zborowsky, ). Bolton (), though noting the centrality of Nightingale's specific “Thirteen Canons,” stressed that these cannot be said to encompass the entirety of her nursing philosophy and that Nightingale “believed that the person was a holistic individual and thus had a spiritual dimension” (p. 101).…”

“…Nightingale (), though not mentioning music per se in the “Canons,” implies music with her acknowledgement of the importance and value of sound as an environmental stimulus. She understood the importance of sound and identified noise as one variable that was not conducive to healing (Zborowsky, ). Nightingale () noted in her “Notes in Nursing” many ways for the nurse to keep everyday noises of a hospital ward to a minimum “Unnecessary noise is the most cruel absence of care which can be inflicted either on sick or well” (p. 27).…”

“…In this sense, she may be considered a revolutionary thinker ahead of her time, who saw the limitations as well as the strengths of physical science vis‐à‐vis the human person, health and healing. Nightingale placed the person at the centre of healing, not only as a passive body to be healed, but also as possessing inner power to access or enable healing (Zborowsky, ). Her early considerations on the interplay with the environment anticipated the social and personal functions of music as forces of healing (Bolton, ; Matthews, ).…”

“…Though Nightingale's philosophy is holistic and not phenomenological, with her emphasis on the environment, her rejection of phenomena as mere materiality, she parallels the phenomenological focus on the centrality of the lived experience within oneself and the world, between the perceiver and the perceived (Benner & Wrubel, ; Zborowsky, ). In this interplay of commonalities between Nightingale and phenomenology, music may be understood as being both in the world and not of the world; being physical, yet also immaterial; and being in existence (when being played), yet not existing (when finished) (Benner & Wrubel, ).…”