Anne Taylor

Parish Nursing in pandemic and beyond; Parish Nurses have responded to #Covid19UK & are perfectly placed to support the most needy in recovery rcni.com/nursing-standa…

While Florence Nightingale is famous as "the Lady with the Lamp," her true impact would be better described as "the Statistician with a Pie Chart." When she arrived at the British military hospital in Scutari during the Crimean War, she found soldiers dying in their own filth -- no beds, no blankets, overflowing sewers, rats everywhere. Ten times more men were dying of disease than of battle wounds. So she did something no nurse had done before: she counted. She collected data. She tracked deaths by cause, by month, by ward. And then she invented a new way to show what she had found -- a diagram that made the horror visible at a glance. The blue wedges were deaths from preventable disease. They dwarfed everything else. Parliament looked at her charts and funded reform. The death rate dropped from forty-two percent to two. Florence Nightingale was born on this day in 1820 in Florence, Italy -- her parents named her after the city. They were wealthy, well-connected, and expected their daughter to marry well and take her place in English society. Her father, unusually for the time, educated her in Latin, Greek, mathematics, and philosophy. But Florence wanted something else entirely. At sixteen, she heard what she believed was the voice of God. "God spoke to me and called me to His Service," she wrote in her diary. "What form this service was to take the voice did not say." It would take her seventeen years to find out. When she told her family she wanted to become a nurse, they were appalled. Nursing was not a respectable profession -- nurses were seen as drunks and the desperate, women who could find no other work. Her mother wanted a society wedding. Florence refused every suitor who came calling. "To be married," she wrote, "would seem to me like suicide." She trained in secret, studying at a hospital in Germany despite her family's objections. In 1853, she finally broke free, becoming superintendent of a small hospital for gentlewomen in London. Then, in October 1854, war came -- and with it, her chance. The Crimean War had been a disaster for the British army. Newspaper reports described soldiers lying in filth, dying not from Russian bullets but from typhus, cholera, and dysentery. Sidney Herbert, the Secretary of State for War, wrote to Nightingale and asked her to lead a team of nurses to the military hospital at Scutari in Turkey. She arrived in November 1854 with thirty-eight nurses. What she found was worse than the reports had described. Wounded men lay in hallways on bare floors. There were no blankets, no clean linens, no proper food. The sewers beneath the hospital had overflowed, and the air was thick with disease. Doctors, suspicious of these women, refused to let them near the patients. So Nightingale started with what she could control. She scrubbed the wards. She set up kitchens to prepare nutritious food. She established a laundry so soldiers could have clean linens. She required everyone -- nurses, orderlies, doctors -- to wash their hands. "Every nurse ought to be careful to wash her hands very frequently during the day," she wrote. "If her face, too, so much the better." At night, when the doctors had retired and silence had fallen over the wards, she walked among the wounded with a lamp in her hand, checking on each man. The soldiers called her "the Lady with the Lamp." A report in The Times described the scene: "When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds." © A Mighty Girl #drthehistories

An honour to attend the 61st @FNightingaleF Commemoration Service @wabbey yesterday💙 Proud to see this year’s 🪔Carrier @RichardDesir8, parade the 🪔 with such dignity & grace, a powerful symbol of the enduring spirit of nursing & midwifery. Great to catch with @sujeffreys 🪔😘

Defence nurses and medical personnel last night joined the @FNightingaleF for its annual service in Westminster Abbey on International Nursing Day to commemorate the life of Florence Nightingale, and to remember the service of all nurses who have served in times of war.

JHGS nurses honoured the legacy of Florence Nightingale by attending a memorial service in her name at Westminster Abbey🇬🇧& laying a wreath at her grave🕯️ A powerful reminder that #nursing is a profession rooted in compassion, courage & service.@DMS_MilMed #FlorenceNightingale

Yesterday evening, HRH The Duchess of Edinburgh attended a service to commemorate the life of Florence Nightingale here at the Abbey. Held in partnership with @FNightingaleF on #InternationalNursesDay, the service celebrated nursing and midwifery and all those working in the professions. You can find out more and see pictures from the service at: westminster-abbey.org/abbey-news/duc…

A huge honour that our Trustee @joycefletcher18 preached @wabbey for the 61st Florence Nightingale Commemoration Service. Taking the theme, ‘There is more that unites us than divides us’, Joyce opened the Word powerfully speaking of the global nature & faith in our health service

Another very moving Florence Nightingale commemoration service @wabbey honouring nurses & midwives, particularly those who gave their life in war & pandemic, & re-commissioning ourselves to our vocation. A particular honour to hear @ParishNursingUK Trustee @joycefletcher18 preach

@JamieWaterall @DHSCgovuk @wesstreeting @teamCNO_ @FNightingaleF @ICNurses @Duncan_CNO @BJNursing @LGAWellbeing Thank you Jamie and for all your support.

@AFTaylorDN @DHSCgovuk @wesstreeting @teamCNO_ @FNightingaleF @ICNurses @Duncan_CNO @BJNursing @LGAWellbeing Likewise Anne & #HappyInternationalNursesDay to all Parish Nurses working across the UK #IND2026 Thank you for everything that you do🙏

It was an honour to attend the Westminster Abbey Service to commemorate the life of Florence Nightingale this evening. A great way to end #InternationalNuresesDay & pay tribute to all my nursing colleagues past & present #IND2026🙏 @DHSCgovuk @wesstreeting

@UrbanHermit15 So good to see you @UrbanHermit15 - sorry to miss you at the end but looking forward to next time.

The Master, Past Master, Chaplain, the learned Clerk and the Worshipful Company of Nurses Liverymen and Freemen at Westminster Abbey for the Annual Florence Nightingale Service.

International Nurses’ Day gives us the opportunity to stop and reflect on the vital role nurses play in our hospitals and communities. Nurses are at the coalface of any health service and you all are coping with an array of mounting pressures on a daily basis, especially during this most challenging of times. As a society we owe you a debt of gratitude for your unstinting commitment, personal sacrifice and quality of care. Nurses are the backbone of our much loved health service, and it’s absolutely fitting that your immense contribution should be marked in this way. “The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest, and not inferior to either in their mission.” - William Osler I wish you all a very Happy International Nurses Day Fr Grant Ciccone

I am daily humbled by the outstanding, transformative work of Parish Nurse colleagues across the UK. Thank you for all you do 🙏 #InternationalNursesDay

On #InternationalNursesDay we are proud to celebrate & thank all our colleagues & nurse leaders for their tireless work to support the health & wellbeing of the nation. And a particular thank you to UK Parish Nurses, many of whom give their time to care for their neighbour #INND

My favourite Ladybird Book @LBFlyawayhome 🙏

@JamieWaterall @teamCNO_ @Duncan_CNO @BJNursing @SteveJFord @FNightingaleF @ParishNursingUK @ICNurses #HappyInternationalNursesDay to you @JamieWaterall Thank you for your leadership.

Wishing all my colleagues from across the globe🌍a very #HappyInternationalNursesDay I am immensely proud of the positive difference that our professions make across our communities, supporting more people to live healthier & longer lives #IND2026

@Duncan_CNO @JamieWaterall And a huge thank you to you @Duncan_CNO for your leadership.

On International Nurses Day #IND2026, thank you to all the colleagues who make up our nursing profession. Your skill, commitment and compassion make a profound difference to people’s lives every single day. #teamCNO

Excited to be preparing for the Florence Nightingale Commemoration Service @wabbey again. I am very much looking forward to honouring colleagues tomorrow and hearing @joycefletcher18 preach 🙏