Hospital statistics and hospital plans / by Florence Nightingale.

  • Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1910.
Date:
1862
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hospital statistics and hospital plans / by Florence Nightingale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/18 (page 5)
    The “ sick treated ” during the year may be obtained by taking the mean of the admissions, and of the discharges from all causes, including deaths. With fixed data, arrived at on these principles, we can readily obtain the proportionate mortality, not only of the whole hospital, but of every ward of it, and also the proportionate mortality and duration of cases for each age, sex, and disease. The laws which regulate diseased action would thus become better known, the results of particular methods of treatment, as well as of special operations, would be better ascertained than they are at present. As regards their sanitary condition, hospitals might be compared with hospitals and wards with wards. The whole question of hospital economics as influenced by diets, medicines, comforts, could be brought under examination and dis¬ cussion. The liability of particular ages, sexes, occupations, and classes of the community to particular forms of disease might be ascertained ; other data, such as “ married ” or “ single, ” previous attacks of illness of the same or different kinds, birthplace, &c., might be added for comparison, and hospital experience might thus be made to sub¬ serve sanitary improvement. The data for these latter comparisons would have to be kept sepa¬ rately, as indeed they generally are in all well-regulated hospitals. A. is a leaf of the hospital “Admission and Discharge” book, proposed by the secretaries to the Statistical Congress, for entering those details required for filling up the annual forms proposed by me and adopted by the Congress; and also for registering the additional particulars regarding the patients, required by the Con¬ gress. B. is one of the annual forms referred to. Especially I wished to call attention to the additional points of hospital statistics agreed to by the Statistical Congress, and which will be found at the end of my paper. They did not come within the scope of my forms. But they are of great importance, par¬ ticularly those referring to the sanitary condition of hospital wards, and to the method of recording fresh attacks of disease in hospital, in the “ Admission and Discharge ” book. These data, if properly used, will enable a check to be kept over the sanitary condition of the hospital, at least as regards hospital diseases. But it must not be forgotten that a hospital is in a bad sanitary state before such diseases can appear. They are evidence of bad constructive arrangements or of culpable sanitary neglect having produced their results, rather than indices of the actual sanitary state of the wards. All careful hospital physicians and surgeons, as well as nurses, can generally tell to what extent a ward is healthy, or otherwise, by the manner in which cases are progressing, before actual hospital disease appears. This is the time to prevent the occurrence of hospital diseases, not after they have occurred. I refer to the point because, since my papers Avere read, some melancholy instances have occurred of fatal hospital diseases arising