Most publications and other available information about Florence Nightingale credit her with establishing the first secular (non-religious affiliated) nursing school in the world. However, although Florence Nightingale was a visionary, an innovator, an advocate, and a reformer and is rightfully regarded as an educator, a statistician, and in 1860, the founder of modern nursing, she did NOT establish the first modern secular educational institution for nursologists.

Much to my surprise, I learned during a March 2017 visit to La Source Institut et Haute Ecole de la Santé [The Source: Institute and High School for Health] in Lausanne, Switzerland, that the honor of establishing the first secular educational institution for nursologists goes to Countess Valerie de Gasparin. She founded La Source (under the name of Normal School for Nurses) on November 4, 1859, which was publicly supported by her husband, Agénor de Gasparin. La Source was regarded as a “unique [educational] institution. Indeed, this secular school arose in opposition to the Protestant monasticism inaugurated in the canton of Vaud in 1842, with the creation of the Institution of Deaconesses of St-Loup.” La Source admitted women who were single, married, or widowed. The students were paid for their work, did not wear a uniform, were not required to take religious vows, and were not referred to as “sister.” (Naissance de l’École La Source [Birth of La Source School]. https://www.ecolelasource.ch/la-source/a-propos-de-nous/historique/1859-1870/).

“Unlike Florence Nightingale, Valerie de Gasparin [did] not practice nursing. [Her] concern [was], above all, to professionalize the caregivers who [were] then of religious obedience. It [was then] a question of training professionals who must not only be competent and remunerated, but also free to practice in their soul and conscience, with complete independence of mind.” (https://www.ecolelasource.ch/la-source/a-propos-de-nous/histoire-la-source/).

Noteworthy is that “With initial training lasting four to five months, the start [was] modest and very gradual. At that time, the notion of a nurse was unknown to the population. Despite competition from the deaconess of Saint Loup, historically established both in education and in the hospital field, in 1882 there were already 203 active professionals, from La Source, out of the 295 trained until then. . . . From 1895, the duration of training increased to eight months, then at the end of the 19th century , to three years, including two internships.” In 2002, La Source adopted a higher education model and evolution from a diploma issued by the Swiss Red Cross to the degree of Bachelor of Science. (https://www.ecolelasource.ch/la-source/a-propos-de-nous/histoire-la-source/).

Especially noteworthy is that “While Florence Nightingale made the school an annex to the hospital [St. Thomas Hospital in London, England], Valérie de Gasparin wanted a school that had a hospital as an annex [La Source]. . . . To ensure the sustainability of the School, Valérie de Gasparin created the La Source Foundation in 1890. She installed this foundation of the villa La Source , in Lausanne, and provided it with sufficient funds. . . . The Foundation’s statutes specify that the School remains independent of any hospital institution.” (https://www.ecolelasource.ch/la-source/a-propos-de-nous/histoire-la-source/).

The importance of formal education for nursology should not be minimized. As Margaret Newman (1992) explained, Nightingale (and I suspect, Countess de Gasparin and Florence Nightingale) realized that people are not born as nursologists but rather have to be educated so that they learn how to think nursology (Fawcett, 2021).

References

Newman, M. A. (1992). Nightingale’s vision of nursing theory and health. In F. N. Nightingale, Notes on nursing: What it is, and what it is not (Commemorative edition, pp. 44–47). Lippincott.

Fawcett, J. (2021). Florence Nightingale: 200 [201] Years Later. Keynote address presented at the American Celebration of Florence Nightingale’s Bicentennial, Boston University, Boston, MA. November 5, 2021. The quotation at the end of this blog and other portions of this blog were extracted from this Keynote Address.