The Nightingale Pledge, named in honour of Florence Nightingale, is a modified version of the Hippocratic Oath. Lystra Gretter and a Committee for the Farrand Training School for Nurses in Detroit, Michigan, created the pledge in 1893. Gretter, inspired by the work of Nightgale, the founder of modern nursing, credited the pledge to the work of her committee, but was herself considered "the moving spirit behind the idea" for the pledge.
The Nightingale Pledge is a statement of the ethics and principles of the nursing profession. It included a vow to "abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous" and to "zealously seek to nurse those who are ill wherever they may be and whenever they are in need." In a 1935 revision to the pledge, Gretter widened the role of the nurse by including an oath to become a "missioner of health" dedicated to the advancement of "human welfare"—an expansion of nurses' bedside focus to an approach that encompassed public health.
Nurse have recited the pledge at "pinning" ceremonies for decades. In recent years, many nursing schools have made changes to the original or 1935 versions, often removing the "loyalty to physicians" phrasing and to promote a more independent nursing profession, with its own particular ethical standards.
Famous quotes containing the words nightingale and/or pledge:
“Everything perfect in its kind has to transcend its own kind, it must become something different and incomparable. In some notes the nightingale is still a bird; then it rises above its class and seems to suggest to every winged creature what singing is truly like.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“I am heartily tired of this life of bondage, responsibility, and toil. I wish it was at an end.... We are both physically very healthy.... Our tempers are cheerful. We are social and popular. But it is one of our greatest comforts that the pledge not to take a second term relieves us from considering it. That was a lucky thing. It is a reform—or rather a precedent for a reform, which will be valuable.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)