Finding patterns of knowing in the work of Florence Nightingale

The health care infrastructure charged with managing human disease, illness, and well-being is challenged beyond its limits, both globally and nationally. As members of the health care community, professional nurses seek a balance between fiscal imperatives and social responsibility, and the foundational knowledge base for our discipline is questioned as never before. As we seek anchor points from which to maintain a nursing focus and simultaneously thrive in such an environment, we turn to the fundamental concepts set forth by Florence Nightingale. Her principles remain as foundations for nursing practice today, although modified and modernized to meet the demands of 21st-century health care. Nightingale, whether deliberately or not, invoked multiple patterns of knowing identified by Barbara Carper in 1978 (empirics, aesthetics, ethics, and personal knowing), as well as the 2 additional patterns of knowing (sociopolitical and unknowing) identified by subsequent scholars. Evidence found within Nightingale’s writings and works are offered to show how she applied these patterns of knowing to the early underpinnings of nursing research, practice, and education.