Will be in St Margaret’s Church, Wellow SO51 6DR on Sunday 11th May at 1030am
The Preacher will be Bishop Rhiannon, the Bishop of Southampton.
King’s New Year’s Honours 2025
Dr Maddie Blackburn OBE
UK National Honour
Dr Madeleine Blackburn
Dr Madeleine Clare BLACKBURN is delighted to have been awarded the Order of the British Empire Medal in the King’s New Year’s honours list for her outstanding services to People with Life-Shortening Conditions.
Nurses from the Nightingale Fellowship met at Embley on Friday 13th August to commemorate the 111th anniversary of the death of Florence Nightingale. After laying flowers at Miss Nightingale’s grave at St Margaret’s Church in East Wellow the group spent time in the Manor House and grounds of Embley Park, the childhood home of Florence Nightingale. Afterwards they visited Romsey Abbey to view the new Nightingale Window and attend a short thanksgiving service acknowledging the work of nurses around the world and all those who have been affected by the Covid Pandemic.
Nightingale Nurses attending the Summer Picnic at Embley Park
NIGHTINGALE FELLOWSHIP HONOURS DAME EILEEN SILLS ON HER RETIREMENT
Dame Eileen Sills, recently retired Chief Nurse at Guys & St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust (GSTT), was presented with a framed Nightingale Badge on Monday 24th August via a Zoom meeting with several of the Nightingale Fellowship Trustees and past Council members. This is a rare award which was given to thank Eileen for her 15 years of support to the Fellowship and championing excellence in nursing care during her time at GSTT.
Following the call, Eileen responded as follows:
‘To everybody in the Nightingale Fellowship I can’t thank you enough for the lovely surprise that I received. I was very touched that you had wanted to honour me in this way especially as I have always wanted to be a Nightingale! I have had a fabulous 15 years at the Trust, it hasn’t always been easy but it has been a privilege to lead the profession and to have nursing held in such high esteem. The relationship we have developed with the Nightingale Fellowship has been precious and without your support the Nightingale Nurse Award and Academy would not have seen the light of day. I think between us we have managed to place nursing and midwifery in its rightful place. I didn’t want to retire, but I have had to accept that my health and my family have to come first. I had been so looking forward to the 2020 celebrations, but I am sure we will have ample opportunity to celebrate in 2021, as we see the Nightingale Garden open in the summer of next year.
I want to end by saying thank you to you all. With very best wishes, keep safe and I look forward to catching up at the AGM in 2021’.
Eileen
25.08.20
Zoom photographs taken by the President
Dame Eileen in her garden
The framed Nightingale Fellowship badge
BROOKWOOD CEMETERY
The Nightingale project for a plot at Brookwood Cemetery is now complete and Hilary Brian has given the following update to share with you:
‘The Cemetery is under new management and there is now a beautiful entrance building with a full-time receptionist. There is now a legible (!) map which I am including here in case anyone would like to visit. Julie Davies and Joan Le Vasseur worked very hard over the years to establish the plot’s boundary and who is buried there and Pauleene Hammett galvanised her gardening team to dignify the site. Thank you to all those people and also to all of those of you who so kindly donated money to enable us to purchase the picket fencing and identify the plot with the board. I have emailed the management to thank them as the plot is being very nicely maintained – there are no fallen branches, the bushes have been pruned where they are near to graves and, clearly, it is regularly strimmed. I drove around the whole Cemetery and didn’t see another plot bounded and identified as neatly as ours. Our ‘sisters’ are truly resting in peace’.
Help for the Nurses in Lebanon
An Appeal is launched to help support the nurses in Lebanon who have been affected by the current crisis there. Some of these nurses, who have had their homes destroyed and have been injured, are trying to return to work but cannot leave their damaged homes unsecured. If you feel you would like to donate, you can do this via the following routes:
gofundme: https://gf.me/u/yuzmu6
International Council of Nurses: Geraldine Limborg at [email protected]
The Fellowship is delighted to accept and honour the work undertaken by the villagers of Dethick, Lea, Lea Bridge and Holloway in Derbyshire, to celebrate their famous resident whose family home was Lea Hurst. A local retired nurse – Mary White – has brought the project together in record time and this was blessed and is displayed at St Thomas’ Hospital, with cards and prints being sold in support of The Florence Nightingale Museum and Lea Village School.
The Florence Nightingale Museum St Thomas’ Hospital 2 Lambeth Palace Rd. London SE1 7EW.
The Florence Nightingale Museum, which is housed in the St Thomas’ Hospital, is devoted to Florence Nightingale, covering her Victorian childhood, her life in the Crimean and her life as an ardent campaigner for health reform.
It is a wonderful place to take your family and learn of her exceptional work. In the Museum, visitors learn more about the legacy of Florence Nightingale and her impact on nursing today. Highlights in the collection of the Museum include the writing slate she used as a child, her pet owl Athena and Nightingale’s important medicine chest.
Should you be in the area of St Thomas’ Hospital it is well worth a visit.
Members of The Worshipful Company of Nurses are enjoying a full programme of events on line and in person. Many Nightingale Fellowship members already belong and enjoy meeting with nurses who trained across the country. For more information go to The Worshipful Company of Nurses – City of London.
The Party Invitations to celebrate the 200th Birthday of Florence Nightingale on or around May 2020 which so many of you were to host or attend were sadly either postponed or cancelled. We are hoping that at some later date a few tea parties may take place and will be posting any information if it received.
Nightingales across the world have been encouraged to have virtual tea parties to replace the planned gatherings and when these take place across the internet we hope to post the photographs on the Fellowship website for you to enjoy.
On 6 February 2024, I was fortunate enough to attend the ceremony at Sydney Hospital. It was the most beautiful sunny day and a great thrill to visit the hospital where I had worked during the 1980s. This special event was the presentation of the Nightingale Badge to Sydney Hospital in recognition of the pioneering work of Lucy Osburn, the Lucy Osburn Nightingale Museum, and for all the Nightingale Nurses.
Sydney Hospital has historic ties with St Thomas’. Lucy Osburn was from Leeds, Yorkshire and a graduate of St Thomas’ training school. She was selected by Florence Nightingale, to go to Sydney in 1868, with five trained nursing sisters, to establish the first School of Nursing in Australia on the Macquarie Street site, at what was then Sydney Infirmary and Dispensary (later Sydney Hospital).
Lucy Osburn was duly appointed Lady Superintendent and fought hard, against considerable opposition, to upgrade patient care, based on sound Nightingale Principles. By the time Lucy returned to England in 1884, trained nursing had been successfully established at Sydney Hospital and greater New South Wales.
The ceremony was held in The Claffy Lecture Theatre at Sydney Hospital, Macquarie Street, Sydney, New South Wales. The beautifully framed Nightingale Badge was presented by Gillian Prager, President Emeritus of the Nightingale Fellowship, to Natalie Maier, Director of Sydney Hospital/Sydney Eye Hospital.
It was a very happy and memorable day with a keynote address from Professor Jill White, Professor Emerita University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) and University of Sydney (USyd). There followed closing remarks from Natalie Maier and then a wonderful afternoon tea, complete with cupcakes bearing a picture of the Nightingale Badge, and a beautiful cake. Later, there was a viewing of The Lady Superintendent, a short film about Lucy Osburn by the Film maker Meg Collins, also a nurse.
I met up with past nursing colleagues and also some fellow Nightingales, who had made Australia their permanent home, and others who were travelling. We spent a lovely time reminiscing about our nursing careers before retirement.
If you are visiting Australia, The Lucy Osburn Nightingale Museum has an interesting and varied display and a visit to see it is highly recommended. I am sure you will be made very welcome.
