Florence Nightingale and the Spanish nursing school of Santa Isabel De Hungría (1896)

The Spanish surgeon Federico Rubio-Galí worked at St. Thomas Hospital in England at the time when Florence Nightingale founded the Nightingale Training School for Nurses (1860). Apparently, he was quite aware of Nightingale's nursing work and expertise and it is known that founded the first Spanish nursing school, in Madrid, in 1896. This led us to wonder if the emergence of his school was purely by chance or was connected to what its founder learned in England. Likely, this learned knowledge led him to apply Nightingale's ideas and to put them into practice in his institution.

We used content analysis techniques and developed categories and subcategories to search for ideological similarities between Nightingale and Rubio-Galí.

The results reflected similarities and coincidences on several issues, mainly related to ventilation, light, infection, hygiene, food, rest, practical training, and observation, among others.

The concepts listed by Nightingale and Rubio-Galí are important for the analysis of nursing from an epistemological and ontological perspective. We concluded that Rubio-Galí was fully aware of Nightingale's ideas and that he implemented several of them in his institution.

Historical research always implies progress in the field of practice and knowledge, permitting arise new issues. The data presented in this article open new questions for practice and the history of Spanish nursing.