ABSTRACT
Florence Nightingale is mostly known for her radi cal innovations in nursing care. Besides being a nurse, reformer, statistician, epidemiologist, and humanitarian, Nightingale was a hospital designer. Nightingale’s Notes on Hospitals (Nightingale, 1863) provided detailed recommendations on the proper physical environment for civilian health care insti tutions. Some of these recommendations remain today. Nightingale felt patients needed fresh air cir culation for infection prevention and sunlight and windows with outside views to raise patient spirits and to quicken healing. Just as infection control and patient safety and the patient experience were at the forefront of Nightingale’s work in the design of the hospital environment, so it continues in the design of modern health care facilities.
