In honor of Nurse Week, I offer this tribute to the avante garde research work of Florence Nightingale in the Crimea that saved lives and set a precedent worth following.
Nightingale was a “passionate statistician” knowing that outcome data are convincing when one wants to change the world. She did not merely collect the data, but also documented it in a way that revealed its critical meaning for care.
As noted by John H. Lienhard (1998-2002): 
“Once you see Nightingale’s graph, the terrible picture is clear. The Russians were a minor enemy. The real enemies were cholera, typhus, and dysentery. Once the military looked at that eloquent graph, the modern army hospital system was inevitable. You and I are shown graphs every day. Some are honest; many are misleading….So you and I could use a Florence Nightingale today, as we drown in more undifferentiated data than anyone could’ve imagined during the Crimean War.” (Source: Leinhard, 1998-2002)
As McDonald (2001) writes in the BMJ free, full-text, Nightingale was “a systemic thinker and a “passionate statistician.” She insisted on improving care by making policy & care decisions based on “the best available government statistics and expertise, and the collection of new material where the existing stock was inadequate.”(p.68)
Moreover, her display of the data brought its message home through visual clarity!
Thus while Nightingale adhered to some well-accepted, but mistaken, scientific theories of the time (e.g., miasma) her work was superb and scientific in the best sense of the word. We could all learn from Florence.
CRITICAL THINKING: What issue in your own practice could be solved by more data? How could you collect that data? If you have data already, how can you display it so that it it meaningful to others and “brings the point home”?
FOR MORE INFO:
- Leinhard, J.H. (1998-2002). No. 1712: Nightingale’s graph. Engines of our Ingenuity. Retrieved form http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi1712.htm
- McDonald, L. (2001). EBN notebook: Florence Nightingale and the early origins of evidence-based nursing. Retrieved from http://ebn.bmj.com/content/ebnurs/4/3/68.full.pdf
- Nightingale, F. (1860). Notes on nursing: What it is and what it is not. New York, NY: D.Appleton & Co. Retrieved from http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/nightingale/nursing/nursing.html
HAPPY NURSE WEEK TO ALL MY COLLEAGUES.
MAY YOU GO WHERE THE DATA TAKES YOU!
I love sharing a great resource, don’t you?
You may even know that meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials are the strongest type of research evidence and that case studies are considered the weakest. (Expert opinion that is not research at all is even below that.)
controlled trial is? If not or if you want a review, 
FOR MORE INFORMATION: Check our Nurse Author & Editor for sure! http://naepub.com/
Is pain experience as diverse as our populations? This week I came across an interesting meta-analysis.
(RCTs) or experimental studies is the strongest type of MA. MA based on descriptive or non-experimental studies is a little less strong, because it just describes things as they seem to be; & it cannot show that one thing causes another.
your practice? Or should it? How can you use the findings with your patients? Should each patient be treated as a completely unique individual? Or what are the pros & cons of using this MA to give us a starting point with groups of patients? [To dialogue about this, comment below.]
library using reference above. It is available electronically pre-publication. Also check out my 
numbers OR words. For example, numbers data might include patient ratings of their pain on a 0-10 scale. An example of word data would asking participants to describe something in words without counting the words or anything else. For example, word data might include patient descriptions pain in words, like 
“stabbing,” “achy,” and so on. Sometimes a researcher collects both number and word data in the same study to give a more complete description. You can see how knowing the patient’s pain rating and hearing a description would give you a much clearer picture of pain.
Chipmunks” cartoon: “Everyone with a nose knows the nose knows everything.” 