Keeping the Lamp Lit: Alumna’s Talk on Florence Nightingale Will Benefit Hospital Nursing Program

Since she published a book about Florence Nightingale in 2013, historian Judith Lissauer Cromwell ’57 has spoken at numerous events for nursing students. Surprisingly, she has found that half of her audiences are unfamiliar with Nightingale’s role as the founder of modern nursing.

Yet, for aspiring nurses and veterans alike, Nightingale’s ambition and meticulous attention to detail offer a valuable standard to follow, Cromwell says.

Florence Nightingale “was very thorough and left nothing to chance,” Cromwell says. “No detail was too small for her to overlook.”

On Thursday, Oct. 2, Cromwell will be at the Smith College Conference Center discussing her book Florence Nightingale, Feminist at a benefit for the nursing development program at Cooley Dickinson Hospital. Cromwell, a former Wall Street executive and published author, will speak from 2 to 4 p.m. to nursing students, hospital professionals, donors and the general public.

Smith is a major contributor to Cooley Dickinson’s “Building our Future” campaign, which supports nurse education and cancer care programs at the hospital.

Jennifer Margolis, a major gift officer at Cooley Dickinson, said organizers of the benefit event felt Cromwell’s “unique perspective on Florence Nightingale would be a very appealing subject.”

Cromwell’s “personal experience, both as a magna cum laude graduate of Smith College and as a 20-year veteran of corporate America, enriches the perspective she shares in her book,” Margolis says.

After graduating from Smith and earning a doctorate in European history from New York University, Cromwell enjoyed a successful career as vice president of Johnson & Higgins, one of the largest brokerage firms in the world. In 1973, she became one of the few women to hold an executive level position on Wall Street.

Cromwell’s historical research inspired her to share the story of Florence Nightingale. While Nightingale’s name often conjures up images of a selfless, nurturing woman making hospital rounds by lamplight, Cromwell’s book expands upon Nightingale’s pioneering life and work, revealing her deep impact on nursing, hospital management, public health, feminism and other social reform.

In addition to founding the Nightingale School of Nursing in London in 1860, which established nursing as a serious profession, Nightingale was among the first to use statistics as the basis for reforms. She was also deeply committed to sanitation.

It was Nightingale who led the transformation of hospitals from the poor condition in which they were often found in the late 1800s—filthy, lacking in supplies, overcrowded and prone to high mortality rates—into the modern institutions they are today, says Cromwell, adding, “One of the lessons we also gain from her is to be steadfast in our focus.”

After serving in the Crimean War in the 1850s, Nightingale was afflicted with a debilitating illness. For the next 40 years, she conducted the majority of her work from her sick bed, where she wrote books, essays and many letters.

“Nightingale knew what her goals were, she knew what had to be done, and she was very much a person of action,” says Cromwell. “She was determined to succeed, despite her illness.”

As Cooley Dickinson prepares for more than half of its nurses to retire by 2020, administrators say the hospital is poised to expand training to help nurses acquire high-level skills and prepare them for emerging fields, such as home health care and care management.

Cromwell believes Nightingale’s example continues to be useful. Nightingale not only advanced the field in terms of the basic science of medicine, but also was concerned with promoting moral and ethical practices, Cromwell says.

“What Florence Nightingale teaches us is how to be forward thinking and to embrace new ideas,” Cromwell says. “One would think that she would have approved of the way nursing has grown. The fact that we’re looking at that is a positive evolution.”

Tickets for Cromwell’s talk at Smith are $35 and must be purchased in advance by calling 413-582-2255 or directly from Cooper’s Corner, State Street, Broadside Books or Amherst Books.