Florence Nightingale helped make hospitals cleaner and more efficient, she helped make nursing an important, respected profession, and helped change the world around her into a better, more caring place. Would you like to be in a dirty, smelly hospital with fleas and rats? Would you want to have a nurse care for you who knows nothing about diseases or nursing? Well that’s the way it would be--if it wasn’t for a woman pioneer set out to improve hospital conditions. That woman was Florence Nightingale. Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820, in Florence, Italy. She was named after the cit