This 2004 5 pound from Alderney celebrates “The Lady with the Lamp,” the founder of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale. Click image to enlarge.

"I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse" ~ Florence Nightingale.

Florence Nightingale is known as the founder of modern nursing because of her dedication to personalized patient care and advocacy for proper hygiene practices by medical professionals. She was a powerful leader who spent her whole life fighting for better patient care.

Florence Nightingale was born in 1820 and named after the city where she was born, Florence, Italy. As part of a wealthy British family, she spent most of her childhood at a family estate in Great Britain. Her father homeschooled her and her sister, ensuring they got a proper education and teaching them all subjects, not just those deemed appropriate for women. However, outside of the classroom, her father believed in the traditional gender roles of the time, encouraging Nightingale to settle down and become a wife and mother. She pushed back against those plans, insisting she had a higher calling.

Nightingale believed that she had received a calling from God, telling her to devote her life to serving others and become a nurse. She accepted a position as the superintendent at the Institute for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen, improving the quality of care there by installing hot water on all floors and finding ways to deliver hot food to each patient.

In 1854, during the Crimean War, reports came back to Great Britain about the horrible conditions soldiers were facing in field hospitals. Due to her dedication to high-quality patient care, Nightingale was asked to assemble a team of trained nurses to travel to the Ottoman Empire and help improve the field hospitals.

Working at a prefabricated field hospital Nightingale lobbied the government to supply, she pushed for proper hygiene practices such as handwashing to help stop the spread of disease. She also found ways to get the patients nutritious meals, and her team was able to provide them with individual care. Their changes transformed the hospital, making it healthier and more efficient and lowering the death rate from 40 percent to 2 percent.

After her return from the military hospital, Nightingale convinced Queen Victoria to launch the Royal Commission, which was tasked with improving the health of the British army. Nightingale also helped set up the Army Medical College in Chatham, published Notes on Nursing: What it is, and What it is Not, and opened the Nightingale Training School to teach people about better patient care and more hygienic hospital practices. Because of her efforts, she is considered the founder of modern nursing.

In 2004, on the 150th anniversary of the Crimean War, Alderney, part of the Channel Islands, issued a 5-pound coin commemorating Florence Nightingale. The first of multiple coins commemorating the Crimean War, this one specifically honored Nightingale's efforts and transformation of the field hospitals. The reverse features a portrait of Nightingale, surrounded by a halo of light and the words "Lady with the Lamp." This was a nickname given to her by the soldiers because she carried her lamp with her as she went from bed to bed, checking on each of the soldiers and providing individual care, even in the pitch black of night.