Florence Nightingale - Patient Quotes

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Apprehension, uncertainty, waiting, expectation, fear of surprise, do a patient more harm than any exertion.

Florence Nightingale
People say the effect is only on the mind. It is no such thing. The effect is on the body, too. Little as we know about the way in which we are affected by form, by color, and light, we do know this, that they have an actual physical effect. Variety of form and brilliancy of color in the objects presented to patients, are actual means of recovery.

Florence Nightingale
The only English patients I have ever known refuse tea, have been typhus cases; and the first sign of their getting better was their craving again for tea.

Florence Nightingale
Never to allow a patient to be waked, intentionally or accidentally, is a sine qua non of all good nursing.

Florence Nightingale
I use the word nursing for want of a better. It has been limited to signify little more than the administration of medicines and the application of poultices. It ought to signify the proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet, and the proper selection and administration of diet — all at the least expense of vital power to the patient.

Florence Nightingale
When you see the natural and almost universal craving in English sick for their 'tea,' you cannot but feel that nature knows what she is about.... A little tea or coffee restores them.... There is nothing yet discovered which is a substitute to the English patient for his cup of tea.

Florence Nightingale
If a patient is cold, if a patient is feverish, if a patient is faint, if he is sick after taking food, if he has a bed-sore, it is generally the fault not of the disease, but of the nursing.

Florence Nightingale
What nursing has to do … is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him.

Florence Nightingale
A nurse who rustles (I am speaking of nurses professional and unprofessional) is the horror of a patient, though perhaps he does not know why.

Florence Nightingale