In the Season 4 premiere of the NurseDot Podcast, host Cara Lunsford is joined by author Melissa Pritchard to explore the captivating realm of Melissa's newest book, "Flight of the Wild Swan." Melissa reveals the inspiration driving her to craft this narrative centered on Florence Nightingale, a pioneer in modern nursing. Reflecting on her writing journey, Melissa discusses the motivations fueling her exploration of Nightingale's story. Together, Cara and Melissa delve into the intricacies of Nightingale's legacy, shedding light on both the admiration and critique she has faced in recent discourse. Melissa offers glimpses into "Flight of the Wild Swan," providing insights into Nightingale's remarkable life.
Guest Overview
Melissa Pritchard is a nationally acclaimed author as well as an Emeritus Professor of English and Women's Studies at Arizona State University. She has published 11 award-winning books of fiction, a biography and a collection of essays. Among other prizes, Melissa has received the University of Georgia’s Flannery O’Connor Award, the University of Rochester’s Janet Heidinger Kafka Award, Chicago’s Carl Sandburg Literary Award, and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great Writers Prize. Her latest novel, Flight of the Wild Swan, is a fictional biography of the founder of modern nursing, Florence Nightingale. Melissa currently lives in Columbus, Georgia.
Episode Transcript
Cara Lunsford (00:17.422)
Well, hello Melissa Pritchard.
Melissa Pritchard (00:22.686)
Hello, Kara Lunsford. I am quite, I'm quite delighted. I mean, I'm really happy. I've been looking forward to this for days, a chance to speak with you and with nurses on this podcast. And I've been listening to all these episodes when I'm driving around, going, Oh, that's a good one. That's a good yes. Well, I wanted to know what this was going to be about. And and I
Cara Lunsford (00:35.866)
Oh my gosh.
Have you? Oh.
Melissa Pritchard (00:46.598)
Yes, and I...
Cara Lunsford (00:46.866)
You never know. You never know, Melissa, because I don't, I try not to overly prepare for these things. I like them to unfold naturally.
Melissa Pritchard (00:53.9)
Yeah.
Yes, I love that. I mean, it's really, I'm a fan now. I am a fan of Nurse Dot.
Cara Lunsford (01:04.994)
Nurse.com, I know. Well, you know, I also had never been the host of a podcast. And when I came to work at Nurse.com, they had acquired my business back in 2022. And so when I came over, I became the VP of community at Nurse.com.
Melissa Pritchard (01:20.811)
Okay.
Melissa Pritchard (01:26.647)
Alright.
Cara Lunsford (01:27.566)
Uh, our parent company is Relias and my boss, uh, who is the chief marketing officer said, Kara, I would like you to start a podcast. And I was like, oh, great. I've never done a podcast before. And she's like, well, I think you'd be great. So there it was born was, uh, was the podcast.
Melissa Pritchard (01:42.891)
I'm sorry.
Right.
Melissa Pritchard (01:53.892)
Yes.
Cara Lunsford (01:57.243)
And my wife is amazing.
Melissa Pritchard (01:57.438)
Well, you're, yeah, yes. Doesn't she does the sound or the, see, I have been listening, I've been listening. I can prove.
Cara Lunsford (02:02.326)
She does the sound. Yes. You have been listening. I know you legitimately have been listening. Um, so I, I'm very excited because I got a message on LinkedIn from, I'm guessing, uh, I'm not sure who this person is in relationship to you, but I'm assuming does like publicity or PR or something. Yeah. And she.
Melissa Pritchard (02:17.654)
Uh-huh.
Melissa Pritchard (02:28.15)
Yes, yes, he's a publicist, yes.
Cara Lunsford (02:30.858)
Yeah. So reached out and was like, I think that, you know, would you enjoy having Melissa as a guest? And I looked into your bio and everything that you had done and what you had written. And I was blown away by, well, I mean, just the accolades and I mean, even Oprah, Oprah's magazine. That's pretty big deal.
Melissa Pritchard (02:54.448)
I know.
Melissa Pritchard (03:00.25)
Yeah, that was a big surprise too. Oh yes, she's yeah, she reaches a lot of people. So that's good.
Cara Lunsford (03:06.502)
She reaches a lot of people. So Melissa, I would love to just like, from you, just a little bit of a bio, like a little bit of like who you are and kind of how you got started as a writer and maybe how you started, how you decided to write this book.
Melissa Pritchard (03:29.114)
Oh, right, you have some time here. All right, well, I'll try to make it brief, but I... I was always told in school that I was good at writing. I didn't find that very exciting. I thought the world was, I wanted to be a dancer. I wanted to be a actress. I was an actress for a while. I became an organic farmer for a while. I tried, I loved life. I loved trying, I went wherever this wind blew me in terms of...
inspiration, but always I would come back to the idea of writing. The thought in the back of my mind, you know, that's what everyone says you're good at. And I wasn't very good at dancing because I don't have any spatial coordination and the organic farming. I don't, I don't know my right from my left. It's really embarrassing. And my, my daughter's inherited it. And we talk about it as a kind of spatial disability that we can't seem to overcome. So the dancing was out.
The organic farming I realized was, I loved it. This is in New Mexico. It was like really wonderful. I was going to have an herb farm and medicinal herbs. I was interested in medicinal herbs, all of that. But it was very hard work, physical work. And I had, yes, and I developed a tiny bit of arthritis and I was trying to write poetry and I didn't know how to write poetry except to dress up in what I thought were poetic flowing blouses and smoke cigars.
Cara Lunsford (04:42.775)
Yes.
Melissa Pritchard (04:55.41)
And that didn't work either. I mean, I was just trying everything. And I thought, well, I can't farm and write. So I have to choose. And in my acting career, which was relatively brief, and trying out for parts and getting parts, I had some talent. But I also got frustrated because you couldn't just choose the parts you wanted. I was trying out for play. I was like, I want to be that one. And they'd say, no, you're going to be this one.
I wanted to be a tragedian, like make people weep. Like, I don't know, I had this grand idea and instead I made people laugh. And I thought, I don't be a comedian. I don't know. So eventually I realized I turned 30, I had my first daughter and I went, my God, 30, that was a big moment. At that point I was a Midwestern housewife disguised as a Midwestern housewife. It's like I've tried on all these people.
And I went 30. That's getting... That means mortality. That means... Because you know how your 20s seem to go on forever and ever and you think, this is wonderful. Suddenly I was 30. I was like that. Oh, well, I better write because I keep thinking I'm going to write and talking about it to my husband at the time, but I don't do it. So that's when I started. I didn't tell anyone I was writing. I was in a mother's group. I was very, you know, I wore clothes from Talbots.
you know Talbot since I'm very, they're cute, they're nice clothes. But I mean, I was literally kind of camouflaged as this Midwestern woman, having been formerly a something of a hippie. So and farmer. So so I started writing quietly. And then suddenly I was getting it took a few years, but suddenly I was getting. And I taught myself to write because I didn't have the money to go to school. We didn't have that much money. So I thought, well, I'll teach myself. So I did. Suddenly I was publishing things.
Cara Lunsford (06:22.794)
Yeah, of course. Of course.
Melissa Pritchard (06:50.762)
And suddenly I won a big award, national award, which was shocking. And nobody and everybody said, we didn't know you were writing. And then they started reading my stuff and said, we don't understand your writing. Did that story, did she die at the end or not? We can't tell. You know, I started, some people were looking at me differently and then my whole life changed and I got a divorce and I moved back to New Mexico and became really committed to writing and then became a professor.
without trying. I got a phone call that invited me to be from Arizona State University. Really, I was a week away from getting food stamps. And I got a phone call from Arizona State University saying, oh, we've read your book. We think you're wonderful. Would you come be a one-year professor for one year visiting? And next thing I know, my two little girls and I are flying to Arizona and we're, I'm a professor and I had to learn to be a professor. This is where acting came in handy.
I could, okay, how do you prepare for the part of a professor? And I found that I loved it. I loved teaching and it gave me, it was a good adjunct to writing. And so my whole life took off from that point in the writing and the publishing and the, as you said, the little awards coming in and things, recognition, such a surprise to me. So that's been my life for the last 30 some years.
Cara Lunsford (07:51.907)
Yes!
Melissa Pritchard (08:18.538)
And the acting, it's funny, you don't know how let your life is, why certain things come into your life and why you do things. But the acting, which I had to put aside because I didn't get the parts I wanted, I thought I can write my own material, you know, as a writer, I can write what I like. That served me well when I give readings or talks because I have some training because, you know, so many people are terrified of public speaking.
I love it because I get to get up and go into this thing, especially if I'm not talking about me, but for instance, Florence Nightingale. So that's how I, that's the circuitous route of how I got to where I am today. And as for Florence, I've always had a penchant for the 19th century, for Victorian times, earlier 19th century. I've written, this is my fourth novel about a historic Victorian woman who really lived.
I think I might be done now with it. I think it might be the end of us. I wrote about a medium, a famous medium in 19th century London, a real young woman, but she wasn't Florence Cook, another Florence. I also seem to have a thing. Yes. So I wrote, yeah, you're gonna see a pattern.
Cara Lunsford (09:23.363)
Wow.
Cara Lunsford (09:26.818)
What was your name?
Oh, so you have a thing for Florence and you have a thing for early 19th century. We're starting to put this together, Melissa.
Melissa Pritchard (09:42.002)
It's a strange one, but there it is. So Florence, yes, Florence Cook was a medium and I was fascinated, I've always been fascinated by the metaphysical and by mediumship and all these things. And so I got really into the world of seances in London and what was real and what wasn't. There was a lot of theater in it, but some of it was perhaps real also. So I wrote that, then I wrote about...
Vernon Lee, her original name was Violet Paget, but she changed it to a man's name because she said nobody read women's literature. So she was a writer who ended up living, a British writer who lived most of her life in Florence, Italy, and other Florence. This is getting, this is getting a little spooky. Okay, I'm spooking myself out here a little bit.
Cara Lunsford (10:22.744)
Ah, oh?
Cara Lunsford (10:30.762)
Please tell me this is not the first time that you've seen this trend.
Melissa Pritchard (10:34.798)
Actually, it kind of is right here on the air. I'm putting it together. And I love Florence, Italy. I've been there a number of times. So Florence Nightingale was named Florence because she was born in Florence. All right. So back to Violet Paget, Vernon Lee. She was, I guess, she was a lesbian writer. But
Cara Lunsford (10:39.834)
This is great.
Melissa Pritchard (11:01.854)
Also very interested in 18th century music. She was a polymath, she was a genius and lived in Florence and Henry James, who was a friend of hers, the author Henry James said, if you go to Florence, there's no one more interesting to talk to than Vernon Lee. And I only wrote about her because I ended up staying in her villa by accident, if there's an accident and anything, in her villa and I felt her ghost around me.
Cara Lunsford (11:24.935)
No, there's not.
Melissa Pritchard (11:29.866)
And I kept saying things to the owner of the villa, like, this would be a great place for a puppet show right out here in this courtyard. And she almost turned white and looked at me and she said, Vernon Lee is to hold puppet shows here all the time, right here. And I said, oh, that's odd. And then I said, a couple more things like that happened. And she's looked at me, this very lovely Italian woman. She said, I think you need to write about her because it's as if you can see her. So I did. So I wrote a book about her.
And then I wrote a book about Fanny Campbell. She's from the famous Campbell acting family in London, Covent Garden. That novel hasn't been published yet. It's whimpering in a drawer. It wants to be released. I'm going to rewrite it a little bit. But she was 19th century also. I don't think there's any connection with Florence there, I can say. Nothing to do with Florence.
Cara Lunsford (12:26.538)
Not yet. Not yet, but maybe it gets published in Florence. I don't know.
Melissa Pritchard (12:33.423)
Yeah, we'll wait and see. So I wrote that. And then I was in 2013, I was in London doing research on Fanny Campbell, the young actress who moved to the South where I live now, to Georgia where I now live. Her story fascinated me. And while I was there doing research on Fanny,
Cara Lunsford (12:34.97)
Ahem.
Melissa Pritchard (12:58.546)
I came across an article that there was a Florence Nightingale Museum in London at St. Thomas's Hospital. Now, this, my interest in Florence Nightingale goes back to my childhood when my mother bought me a series of biographies of famous people, perhaps to inspire me. You know, they were all men except for Florence Nightingale, you know, Alexander the Great and Benjamin Franklin and all these people didn't really interest me very much. But then I read Florence Nightingale. I don't know if there's someone.
Cara Lunsford (13:22.725)
Yeah.
Melissa Pritchard (13:27.698)
I could identify with in some ways. And so I've had a longstanding kind of fascination with her. Also, I come from a family of doctors, nurses. My grandmother was a nurse. My great aunt was a nurse. My uncle was a surgeon. It just goes on and on. My current husband is a retired surgeon. I just always had a fascination with medicine and I wanted to be a doctor or a nurse.
I wanted to be in medicine, but I didn't think I had the scientific aptitude. Now that was something that came through the social meme. I think I do have the scientific aptitude, but at the time I was growing up, no, I didn't think I did. You weren't encouraged to be a scientist or a nurse or a doctor. So I didn't go that direction. But
But I've always loved it. And whatever city I'm in, traveling worldwide, I'll go to the medical museum. I will find a medical museum and go to it. I'm a bit of a nerd about things like that. And I've written short stories about things. Yeah.
Cara Lunsford (14:36.654)
Well, you seem like you're like a Renaissance woman. Yeah, that's what I get from you. I mean, you're just so incredibly artistic. That just comes through, just even through as I'm looking at you and listening to you and the artisticness and creativity of you just like comes pouring out.
Melissa Pritchard (14:41.974)
Something. I, yeah, I have.
Melissa Pritchard (14:53.526)
Mmm.
Melissa Pritchard (14:57.39)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Pritchard (15:05.799)
Yeah.
Cara Lunsford (15:06.154)
Um, it's really enjoyable to be honest, like I'm really enjoying listening to you. Um, and I don't know if you know this, but at nurse.com, we have original memorabilia letters that were written by Florence Nightingale and yes, we have like original.
Melissa Pritchard (15:20.767)
No.
Melissa Pritchard (15:24.875)
Oh my goodness. Ah, thrilling.
Cara Lunsford (15:30.102)
Yes, it's very, very cool. We have Florence Nightingale and Clara Barton and just some really, really incredible things from that period of time. I'm also really fascinated by just the history of medicine, how it's evolved.
Melissa Pritchard (15:33.518)
Hmm.
Melissa Pritchard (15:38.059)
Yes.
Melissa Pritchard (15:46.986)
Yes, me too. Yes, how it's evolved and is still evolving and so rapidly in so many ways. Yeah, I'm absolutely fascinated by medicine. And for a brief time in high school, I became a candy striper. That was as close as I ever got to be. What you are. I mean, I would carry little things around for people and roll the reading carts and the mail carts around and hold babies as women got into the, their husbands helped them into the cars.
scared to death I was going to drop the baby, you know, like what if I dropped the baby? What a terrible thing. But I loved being a candy striper. It was from the high point of my whole week. But yes, medicine to me is, and it's innovations and continuing involvement and science just fascinates me. Absolutely.
Cara Lunsford (16:21.323)
Oh my God.
Cara Lunsford (16:36.074)
As you researched Florence Nightingale, I think that it's been kind of interesting, right? Like how currently there's mixed feelings about her and it's tough because people were products of their time. Right? Like they...
Melissa Pritchard (16:46.325)
Yeah.
Melissa Pritchard (16:51.038)
Yes, absolutely.
Melissa Pritchard (16:59.415)
Mm-hmm.
Cara Lunsford (17:00.43)
And like I even think about my, uh, my great grandmother, for example. Um, she, the things she was taught about people of color, uh, it, she just didn't really know any different. I mean, like that, that's just like what she was taught. And I considered her. Um, a.
Melissa Pritchard (17:05.87)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Pritchard (17:12.758)
Mm-hmm. Oh, absolutely.
Cara Lunsford (17:30.57)
a really wonderful person who had a great love of people. But she would say, oh, I met the most lovely colored man today. Now the sentiment was that she had met someone lovely and that she was very connected and warm towards this person. But she still called him a colored man.
Melissa Pritchard (17:44.878)
Mm-hmm
Melissa Pritchard (17:51.066)
Yes, the empathy. Yes.
Melissa Pritchard (17:59.03)
That's right.
Cara Lunsford (18:00.622)
Because that was actually the nicer thing to say during that time. During that time, there were other words that were not nearly said with, yeah, we're very pejorative. And so I understand
Melissa Pritchard (18:05.494)
That was the yes agreed.
Yes.
Melissa Pritchard (18:15.876)
Yes.
more pejorative, yeah. Mm.
Cara Lunsford (18:29.146)
where people can feel conflicted. But I also think like, it's really important not to throw the baby out with the bath water, right? Like to try to look at people very holistically and take the good, like we're all kind of a mix of good and bad.
Melissa Pritchard (18:32.045)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Pritchard (18:35.413)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Pritchard (18:42.345)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Pritchard (18:48.022)
We are. Just think of, you know, Kara, you can think of, well, I can think of what I was taught in school, elementary school and things, and how from that time, so much has changed. So much history is constantly being revised. Social history, cultural history, we're constantly learning. And I also think we're kind of part of an ecosystem, a human ecosystem always. We're born into a time of.
place and we're influenced by that. We don't know, we're not looking at ourselves from 200 years from now. So, and I don't think that's an excuse. I really think it's just the truth and I'm constantly learning new things about history. History is constantly being revised. What we know about human beings, what we know about animals and how they communicate, how trees communicate with one another. I didn't know that 10 years ago or even five, I don't think. So think.
Cara Lunsford (19:25.903)
Right.
Melissa Pritchard (19:46.29)
If you think in the broader sense of that, holistically, as you say, um, I understand the criticisms of Florence Nightingale. I've come across them. I've read them. I listen respectfully. I also think.
Melissa Pritchard (20:03.114)
Let's look at this in a deeper sense. One of the things I admire about Miss Nightingale, as I call her, is that, yes, she was born at the height of the British Empire. Yes, she was born into an elite family, a wealthy, elite family. From a young age, she was introduced to future prime ministers. And they came to the house for dinner. She didn't even do her own hair until she went off to Kaiser of Earth Hospital in her late 20s.
late 20s. And she wrote home to her mother saying, well, I'm happier than I've ever been. I'm getting more and more independent. I'm even doing my own hair. I thought even doing her own hair, that's that gives you a little window into what how she was raised. So what I admire about her in one of the things is that she used very strategically use her higher connections with wealth.
power and the male patriarchy in which she was raised, where women were not supposed to do anything. And in her class, women were supposed to do nothing but get married, have the man's child, and you know, maybe nurse the servants or the tenants of the estate. She actually used her connections in a very brilliant way to get to where she wanted to get to the social reforms.
and to the scientific group, statistical reforms, to the nursing's founding, the nursing schools. She was incredible in her use of what she'd been given. Was she perfect? No. Are any of us? No. There have been some, there has been a criticism, I've come across criticism. There's a comparison, a sort of hostile comparison between her and Mary Seacole, the Jamaican nurse who also went to the Crimea. But as I studied them,
And I have a chapter in the novel about their meeting. They only met once when Mary Seacole came over to help in the Crimea, and she needed a place to stay before she sailed across the Black Sea from Istanbul, Scutari, where Florence was in the hospital there. And Florence invited her to stay the night at Scutari Hospital before she set off across the Black Sea to Sebastopol.
Melissa Pritchard (22:27.126)
They did meet, they did have a conversation. Now I imagine that conversation in the novel. But from all I can see later in her autobiography, Mary Seacole was very complimentary toward Florence Nightingale and praised her. And Florence Nightingale, when Mary Seacole later on fell into bankruptcy, contributed to her fund to get her out of bankruptcy and said that, and she also praised her.
I think these, we don't need to pit these two women against each other. They were both remarkable. They both went in different directions. They had different perspectives and views of what they wanted to accomplish. Um, and why, why pit them against each other? They, they didn't, they don't need to be, they're both extraordinary in their own ways. Um, and I am glad that Mary Seacole has been recognized now. She should be recognized and I love that we're bringing forward all these women who have.
Cara Lunsford (23:15.962)
Yeah.
Melissa Pritchard (23:23.998)
meant to, but women who have been recessed in history, erased. And Florence was somewhat, my opinion is that she was somewhat used while she was in the Crimea by the British government and by the British military because they were coming under a lot of criticism for their corruption in a handling of the war. And here comes this.
aristocratic gentle lady with a lamp. They turned her into this kind of sweet softened image when she was anything but. She became a public distraction in the newspapers back home. You know, she became a celebrity, which she absolutely did not want to be. She said, I don't, I, she called it all the fuzz buzz around her. She hated it. They're very, I like fuzz buzz. She
Cara Lunsford (24:18.223)
Yeah.
Melissa Pritchard (24:18.846)
There aren't even very many photographs of her. There aren't many portraits of her. She didn't want, her emphasis was on her work. But I believe she was to some degree, and I think she had some awareness of it, that she was being elevated as a celebrity, as the angel of the Crimea, the lady of the lamp, the mother of all soldiers, to distract from the ineptitude and the corruption that was going on.
in the Crimea, in the British hospitals. And it worked. But she used that celebrity when she got home. She played it. And so I think...
Yes, she's a product of her time. So are all of us. You know, sometimes I think, gosh, what are my, what is my granddaughter going to say about what I did about the environmental crisis?
Cara Lunsford (25:11.362)
Right, absolutely.
Melissa Pritchard (25:11.422)
you know, what are two generations from now when they're struggling with that? What are they going to what did you do? You know, why didn't you do more? So I mean, I tried to see the whole picture. Florence has also been accused of being authoritarian and difficult. I'm sure she was because she was doing the great the great British experiment of taking the first group of women
Melissa Pritchard (25:41.922)
British military thought women were useless, didn't belong in war. What were they doing there? So she had to overcome so many obstacles and biases when she got there. And if she allowed her 38 nurses and then more were added, which didn't make her happy, if more were added and if they were running a mock or somehow not doing their jobs properly or something, it would all fall on her that the experiment failed.
So I thought, well, if I were her, and I'm a pretty easygoing person, but if I were her and that was all on me to make this work for the future of nursing and women in nursing, I think I might be a little strict also, you know, with the nurses around me. So I, you know, especially as a fiction writer, you try to inform her actress, it's getting into character. You try to get into her character, the whole character.
Cara Lunsford (26:36.642)
Yeah, well, it's, yeah, I mean, I think that that's kind of our responsibility when we're looking at history and historical figures is just to try and depict the person as accurately as possible. And, you know, and, and
Melissa Pritchard (26:47.676)
Mmm. Mm-hmm.
Melissa Pritchard (26:56.456)
Yes.
Cara Lunsford (26:59.558)
I like to think that I live in the gray area a little bit. I try not to live in the black or the white or say, you know, people are all this or all that. We're just such an incredible mix. We're like a marble, you know? And to try and tease out the different colors of a marble is impossible, really. And so...
Melissa Pritchard (27:03.492)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Pritchard (27:10.242)
Right?
Melissa Pritchard (27:15.7)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, I like that. Mm-hmm.
Melissa Pritchard (27:21.397)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Pritchard (27:27.927)
Hmm
Cara Lunsford (27:28.114)
I think that we just have to learn how to embrace that and see people for who they are. And I think what you said is really important about we would want people to have compassion for us.
Melissa Pritchard (27:46.781)
Yes.
Cara Lunsford (27:47.458)
200 years from now and kind of have this belief that like we were doing the best we could at the time with what we had available to us and with the information we had and the resources that we had and
Melissa Pritchard (27:49.971)
Yeah.
Melissa Pritchard (27:55.088)
Mm-hmm.
Cara Lunsford (28:06.514)
And I do think that that's like, if we want compassion towards ourselves, 200 years from now, there is some element of compassion and understanding that we need to have for people 200 years ago. And
Melissa Pritchard (28:23.33)
Yes, that's beautifully said. And I think you're making me think of you. I'm having a thought I've never quite had before that perhaps we've been watching our so-called heroes and heroines be dismantled and torn down and pointed out as, well, they really did this and they really had this, their worst. We tended to idolize or idealize people and put them on pedestals as role models.
And in school, too, we were given role models. I was given Florence Nightingale as a role model. And I have been bemoaning the fact that we've been taking down all our role models and pointing out the lesser admirable characteristics of these people through revisionist history. But then you just made me think this is a good thing more than a negative thing, because it's creating a human portrait of us all, that we are marbles. We are mixed.
We're all made up like this. We try our best. We are all doing our best. And I don't think I'd want anyone examining my life under a microscope and saying, well, she did this and she did that. So does that negate the other good things she did? I don't think so. I think we're a mix of these things. And this helps us maybe as a species evolve into a more compassionate view of ourselves, not so.
I have a phrase I love and I'm not sure where I gathered this phrase from, but I would use it when I would teach writing, creative writing, to write with the eye of the recording angel. To see with the eye of the recording, isn't that gorgeous? I wish I knew where I found, read that, but it struck me as true that you see it all. You see the positive, you see the not so positive. You see the mix.
Cara Lunsford (30:04.618)
Oh, that's beautiful.
Melissa Pritchard (30:20.258)
but you don't judge, you just try to have compassion and learn from it and evolve yourself into a better person. It's maybe a lesson for us all and not throw the baby out with the bath water. Florence, the other thing is she was turned into this, into this idol, this bronzed myth and she was made into a sentimentalized the lady with the lamp. You always see her.
you know, with the little kerchief on and the little lamp, we're holding the little lamp, it's not even the correct lamp that she carried. And actually she didn't carry it, she had an assistant carry it, so that they've just learned this recently, so that she could take down medical notes with each patient, or if they wanted to write a letter home to their mother, father, wife, she would write it for them. So someone else was actually carrying that lamp for her. But in the...
miles at night that she would walk the corridors at Scutari. I think my part of my motivation in writing this novel was I wanted to find out who she really was. I wanted to bring her down. There's a bronze statue of her in Waterloo Place in London. I think it's about 15 feet tall and it's a lovely statue. It's a tribute, you know, from the UK to Florence Nightingale but
it's fixed, it's immobile, it's not real. I wanted to find out who the real woman was. And that's why I began with her childhood when she finds a wounded rabbit, hair, H-A-R-E, out in the forest and has her first experience of suffering and tries to save, you know, it dies in her arms. And then I move her through all her seeking out of suffering actually, she would seek it out and try to help.
you know, try to fix. But she also had a passion for mathematics, statistics. She was the first woman inducted into the Royal Statistical Society. She had a genius for numbers and for administration. And I know the word administration is not a popular word. It's not a poetic word. It's a word we kind of recoil from. But that, too much administration. But she was, in her day, quite brilliant at organizational skills.
Melissa Pritchard (32:45.734)
and using pie charts, circular diagrams, because she said people, she understood that people wouldn't look at bar graphs, they wouldn't look at numbers tables. She said people just can't look at those, but they will look at a visual pretty diagram with shaded colors like her famous rose diagram, and see, for example, that most of the deaths in the Crimea in Scutari Hospital,
The majority of them were caused by a lack of sanitation.
lack of hygiene and resultant disease rather than battle wounds. The battle wounds were much less and that was her argument for it. She became a sanitarian, another not very poetic word, but that's what she became, a passionate statistician and because she said this is what makes people better, you know.
Cara Lunsford (33:27.908)
Yeah.
Cara Lunsford (33:44.226)
Yeah, she was probably just looking anecdotally, but also she was able to understand from that anecdotal evidence, how that probably translated into more like statistical numbers that she could apply towards the masses.
Melissa Pritchard (33:49.078)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Pritchard (33:59.214)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Pritchard (34:03.637)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Pritchard (34:08.342)
the masses. She went home after the war and applied it first of all to the British military, but then she kept expanding out expanding out became a social reformer. She a little known fact about her. That's just more or less been emphasized very recently, is that she insisted on that trained nurses and mid wives should be should go into the notorious workhouses of the day where the poor
were kind of shelved, poor people were just kind of, let's put them in the workhouse and they can get sick and die in there and they would have to take care of one another, completely untrained. And she said, no, this is wrong. Everyone should have accessible healthcare, equal accessible healthcare, no matter your economic status, no matter your title. It should be, she was the progenitor of the national health system.
Cara Lunsford (35:04.774)
Wow. I mean, so if you, if she was alive today, based on everything you've learned about her.
Melissa Pritchard (35:10.006)
Mm-hmm.
Cara Lunsford (35:14.894)
What do you think she would have done much of the same thing that she did when she was alive? Or do you think that she, could you see her in another position if she had lived in a world post-women's suffrage? You know? Uh.
Melissa Pritchard (35:33.234)
Yes, right, right.
Cara Lunsford (35:35.35)
and maybe even in the 21st century where maybe women have quite a bit more rights than they even had in the 1970s. So could you imagine her in a different type of role or position?
Melissa Pritchard (35:40.119)
Mm.
Melissa Pritchard (35:43.738)
Yes. Yeah, yes.
Melissa Pritchard (35:56.482)
That's fascinating. I've thought a lot about that. I haven't come up with a definitive answer, but I think she would be absolutely behind all the medical advances that have been made. So recently, gene therapy and 3D imaging, robotic surgery.
Melissa Pritchard (36:17.81)
I think she would be quite fascinated by the potential for AI, you know, artificial intelligence in medical diagnostics, how that would be used. She'd probably be also very cautious about it. She was, she had a scientific mind. Nursing actually was a smaller part of her life in the beginning. The nursing led her into these other things. So I think she would be.
I just read an article recently about why there aren't more women and girls in STEM, science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. There needs to be more, the argument, the article was talking about there needs to be much more diversity in those fields and a greater number of young girls and women. It started out by saying, can you name three women who are famous scientists? And I went, well, let's see, Marie Curie. I couldn't. Then I was kind of, you know, like.
And that was the point. So I think she would be behind that movement, bringing more people of diversity, more women and girls, opening up those fields for them. She could be an exemplar. I think she would make it accessible and exciting for them. Yeah.
Cara Lunsford (37:33.838)
Yeah, it seems like she is definitely a trailblazer, right? Like no matter whether she was from the 19th century or if she was in the 21st century that she would be very forward thinking. She would be looking at...
Melissa Pritchard (37:50.026)
Mm-hmm.
Cara Lunsford (37:56.086)
What is at the root cause of something? What is the root cause of something? Not just looking at the symptoms, but trying to distill it down and really get to the root of where a problem exists. Kind of like when you talk about her being a san, what did you say, a sanitarian? A se? Ha ha ha. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But like, but she understood.
Melissa Pritchard (38:03.074)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Pritchard (38:12.332)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Pritchard (38:16.698)
Yes, it's not a term we use. It is not a term we use anymore. I'm a sanitarian. But she knew.
Cara Lunsford (38:25.046)
like bacteria and hand washing.
Melissa Pritchard (38:29.11)
Hand washing was hygiene. She understood cleanliness was important and she saw relationship between disease. And when Scutari was the most shocking example going over to the war, because before then she had been the superintendent of a small hospital for distressed gentle women. These were women of gentle, so-called gentle classes. I learned so much writing this book. I was kind of...
became quite radical in my reading. I was like, wow, the role of governesses in Victorian society, often they had to be quote unquote well-bred, but then they didn't have the right connections or whatever and they ended up being governesses. Their health was broken down really quickly. They were paid nothing. And so this was a home for these women to recuperate from their illnesses. So she kind of started with that as a superintendent and then she...
when the cholera epidemic broke out in 1853, another cholera epidemic, she actually went into Middlesex Hospital as a volunteer and she nursed the cholera patients. And you know, cholera is very contagious. She was very fearless, completely fearless woman. And she nursed them and many of them were prostitutes and young, I mean 12, 13, 14 year old girls.
who died, you know, one after the other after the other, no matter what she did, because the treatment for cholera in those days was not, you know, it was kind of not very effective. But, and she was enraged, not at the, you know, she, she was so compassionate with these, these girls, these children, and her anger was against the society that created conditions so that these young girls had to do this kind of work. And then, you know,
So that was another form of suffering she moved through. And then she was called to the Crimea and goes into this hospital where she also learned that the officers, the officers in the army, British army, often they paid their way in to be officers. They were of the elite classes. She didn't have much interest in them. There were people taking care of them. They had their own servants.
Melissa Pritchard (40:56.45)
Her heart, her work was with who she called her boys, the foot soldiers, the everyday soldiers, many of whom were Irish, many of whom didn't even, that spoke only Gaelic, many of whom were recruited because they came from such poor conditions, such poverty, that they were recruited by the army for a shilling and a pint of beer and a promise of a fancy uniform.
an adventure abroad and off they went. They were cannon fodder and she saw that and they had they lived there. The conditions they were in were so extremely horrendous living in their own filth wearing the The sewer system was overflowing so that you had to walk ankle deep through sewage. I mean, I could go on about how bad it was like a shocking and she said, well, this is
Cara Lunsford (41:25.562)
Wow.
Melissa Pritchard (41:52.574)
And the Sanitary Commission was sent over from England. And they started cleaning up the sewer systems, white washing, lime washing the walls, cleaning. They brought in, one of my favorite characters in my novel is real person Alexis Soyer, a famous French celebrity chef who made lunches for Queen Victoria, but he also worked for the Irish during the famine. He set up soup kitchens. He was an amazing character.
he came over and helped set up the kitchens and improve the soldiers' diets, but her compassion really was for her boys. And today, you can go online today, Karen, you can actually listen to Florence Nightingale's voice for about 35 seconds. You can type it in, say Florence Nightingale voice recording that was made of her when she was in her 50s, I believe.
It was a philanthropic endeavor to raise money for these soldiers who had lived through this and were now sleeping in coffin beds and workhouses or on the streets, kind of like when our Vietnam veterans came home and were completely, you know, shunned. And she was raising money for them by recording her voice. You can hear her voice, which is very interesting. But she...
Cara Lunsford (43:06.627)
Yeah.
Cara Lunsford (43:13.838)
Wow, I didn't even realize that they could, I didn't even know that was a possibility to record. I don't know.
Melissa Pritchard (43:20.634)
I know that was that was Thomas Edison, Thomas Edison on a wax cylinder, he created something called the, I think it was called the celebrity series. So he was recording all the famous people of the time before they died. And so you can listen to Lord Tennyson and charge of the light brocade, you can listen. Gilbert and Sullivan, you know, it's really interesting. Yeah, but you can listen to Florence. But her heart was with it with the underprivileged and the poor.
Cara Lunsford (43:41.966)
That's amazing.
Melissa Pritchard (43:50.4)
Um.
Cara Lunsford (43:51.598)
Yeah. Which is why what you were saying is like, just about that universal healthcare probably would have been something that was very, very important, accessibility, access to healthcare.
Melissa Pritchard (43:53.683)
And you can, yeah.
Melissa Pritchard (44:00.31)
Yes. She.
Melissa Pritchard (44:06.062)
she would be, whether if she were here in America or over in the UK, she would be advocating for universal healthcare for all. It was a deep belief in her. And also after the war, she got somehow involved, interested in India. She worked so hard for the rest of her life. And I only have, the novel only goes up to age 36 with a couple of little side chapters, but.
Cara Lunsford (44:16.387)
Yeah.
Melissa Pritchard (44:33.922)
Because after that, when she got home, she was bedridden most of her life with, well, she'd gotten crimean fever over in the Crimea. Now they think it's, it was brucellosis, chronic brucellosis with spondylitis. She was in, yeah, terrible pain most of her life. Had to be carried across a room. She couldn't walk. So she did most of her work from her bed.
Cara Lunsford (44:49.199)
Oh. Oh yeah.
Melissa Pritchard (45:01.142)
But she reached out, her influence went across the whole world. And she got interested in India because of, first, through the British army there and their sanitation. Again, sanitation, hygiene, cleanliness. But from there, she got really interested in the Indian culture and Indian villages. And even Mahatma Gandhi credits her, acknowledges her greatness and her usefulness in India.
She moved into the, you know, writing these papers about villages in India, how to improve their irrigation system. She was almost environmentalist too. I mean, her mind went, there was no limit to this woman's mind for improvement, for improving the human condition.
Cara Lunsford (45:50.832)
It's just so incredible that... So this is Flight of the Wild Swan. Because we have not mentioned the name of the book, however, but I will in your intro. I always do your intro after and everything, so there's no concern there.
Melissa Pritchard (45:58.978)
Mm.
Melissa Pritchard (46:03.546)
Oh, that's right, I forgot. Yes, I forgot. Okay. After.
Melissa Pritchard (46:15.898)
Okay, I forgot actually.
Cara Lunsford (46:18.03)
Uh, no, it's fine. Like I, but I wanted to make mention of it because where did the title come from?
Melissa Pritchard (46:23.782)
Yes, yes. All right. The title, the title came when I was doing all my research on her. I spent about six years researching her life. And I came across a passage where her mother said,
I do not understand Florence. We're a family of ducks. How did we hatch a wild swan? And I said, that's it, she's the wild swan. Yeah, and originally it was called just the wild swan, but my publisher did her little research on her own and discovered that there were too many other books that had something about flight, had something about wild swans in them.
Cara Lunsford (46:55.312)
beautiful.
Melissa Pritchard (47:11.946)
And she said, we need to either change the title or broaden it. So we came up with the flight because she did, she really did flee from the convention of, conventions of a Victorian society she was born into. She really burst out of that, broke out of that. It took her 13 years overcoming her family's objections, strenuous objections, but she did. I mean, her determination is...
to me so inspiring even today and her fearlessness. So.
Cara Lunsford (47:45.818)
What I find so interesting too about that is that knowing that she came from a place of such privilege that her mother or her family referred to themselves as a family of ducks instead of the opposite where you would almost think like we're a family of swans, like we don't understand this wild duck. You know.
Melissa Pritchard (47:47.592)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Pritchard (47:54.535)
Yes.
Melissa Pritchard (48:02.012)
I know, I thought that was... yeah.
Melissa Pritchard (48:08.442)
This little... Yes. Right.
Cara Lunsford (48:13.442)
because she seemed like she was so different. And, but in, but almost like, I just thought that that's very interesting that you were saying that her family thought of themselves as a family of ducks. And I'm like, boy, that's an interesting thing to kind of...
Melissa Pritchard (48:17.887)
She was...
Melissa Pritchard (48:30.286)
Mm-hmm. I know. Yeah.
Cara Lunsford (48:38.458)
tease apart and look into it and be like, God, that's, it's amazing to me how people see themselves and then how they see others. And, but it is beautiful that they saw her as more of like a wild swan in a beautiful way.
Melissa Pritchard (48:46.509)
Yes.
Melissa Pritchard (48:53.734)
Yes, I thought I had this in a beautiful way and her mother, such others, you know, one story comes out of another story out of another story, but her mother's father had been a, so that would be Florence's grandfather, had been a member of parliament who worked with William Wilberforce to overcome, to bring a law against the slave trade, to end the slave trade.
you know, she came from a, her mother's family came from a very liberal bunch of people. And but then her father lost all his money and so Florence's mother experienced a bit of poverty and so she never wanted to experience that again, right? We're not going back there. And then her father, Florence's father, inherited, I think he came from a family of
Melissa Pritchard (49:51.93)
family of merchants. I'm trying to figure out the duck part, but he inherited from his great uncle, who was a bachelor, incredible amount of wealth. That's where the wealth came from. As long as he changed his name from Shore to Nightingale, which was the great uncle's name, so he did. So Florence's name, yeah, very interesting. And then the other thing I want to say about Florence before I forget,
Cara Lunsford (50:13.199)
Wow.
Melissa Pritchard (50:19.83)
that I find admirable, and I don't want to forget this, is she believed for many years in what they called the miasma or foul air theory of disease, that certain foul air created diseases. That was a long, yeah, it was called the miasma or foul air. And she believed that for many years until the late 1880s. So that would have made her in her 60s.
Cara Lunsford (50:36.268)
Interesting.
Melissa Pritchard (50:47.146)
She finally, when Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch definitively proved germ theory as a cause of disease, and they started creating the vaccines against tuberculosis and rabies and all these things, cholera, as soon as she saw the scientific proof of it, she switched her allegiance from myasmic theory to germ theory. So she was always ready to go to the next level of discovery and...
And what's true, she was a pragmatic, scie person.
Cara Lunsford (51:19.398)
Well, maybe she just didn't realize, like we think about airborne, like we think about things that are airborne, right? There's, there's different types of disease. Some of it's through contact and some of it's through airborne. And maybe she was just a little bit of, maybe a little ahead of her time in a way, or realizing that there, there were these
Melissa Pritchard (51:23.858)
And that.
Melissa Pritchard (51:32.166)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Cara Lunsford (51:48.418)
microbes or things that were in the air or foul air if you will like that it i don't know is that is could that just have been that she understood airborne illness
Melissa Pritchard (51:50.581)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, yeah, it's a term.
Melissa Pritchard (52:04.494)
She could have. She was prescient. She did see ahead, and that could have been part of it. If you read a lot of her work, and she's written thousands and thousands of pages, and I haven't read them all, but interestingly, she was prescient about things like color therapy. You can, yeah, what the blue, the effect that the color blue will have on a patient versus the color red or the color, you know, she was prescient about that.
Cara Lunsford (52:22.51)
Oh, fascinating.
Melissa Pritchard (52:32.438)
She was pressuring about the use of animals for therapy, animal therapy. Oh, so ahead of her time.
Cara Lunsford (52:37.786)
Wow, she was ahead of her time.
Melissa Pritchard (52:45.318)
the importance of art. She would make sure there was some beautiful art on the walls or that the patient was turned toward a window. Nothing worse than putting this book right here, Notes on Nursing. I don't know if you've read it or not. It doesn't take long. It was her most popular book. It outsold Charles Dickens, if that can be imagined. Anybody outselling Charles Dickens. But she wrote this for the average or the...
Cara Lunsford (52:58.794)
I have not, but I will.
Melissa Pritchard (53:13.686)
typical woman who lived in a home, the woman was responsible in Victorian times to care for the sick. You didn't go to a hospital because hospitals were notorious for disreputable goings on and a nurse was the lowest thing you could be in Florence's early days. But anyway, so she wrote this for the women at home who had to nurse not only the servants, family members, perhaps tenants on estates.
And if you read, I've read this several times and each time I'm struck.
by how many of her things, though they're couched in a kind of Victorian language, still are true today. How to walk into a room with a patient, how to speak to the patient, what tone of voice to use, how sensitive, what it's like to be a patient. Don't just go in saying, oh, you look better, you'll be well soon, you know, and come in with a cheerful story, not a, you know. I'm amazed by her psychological insights about what it is to be a patient.
and how to be sensitive toward that patient as a nurse. Thank you. Yes.
Cara Lunsford (54:20.038)
Well, she had emotional intelligence, right? Like that's something we talk about today is about the power of emotional intelligence. And they didn't have a word for it back then, but we know now how incredibly important that is in nursing. It's the art, right? That's the art of medicine versus the science of medicine.
Melissa Pritchard (54:41.311)
Absolutely.
Melissa Pritchard (54:47.186)
Yes, yes, yes.
Cara Lunsford (54:50.072)
think that that's what she consistently reminded people of was that this is an art. It's a caring is an art.
Melissa Pritchard (55:01.87)
That's exactly what she said. You could be Florence right now. That's it. Are you Florence? I don't think I was because she was awfully smart, but she did talk. She called, she has a quote, nursing is both an art and a science and it is perhaps the highest of the arts. That's what she says. There's a whole quote of hers about nursing as an art as well as a science. And I think she definitely believed that and was.
Cara Lunsford (55:07.819)
Maybe I was, I don't know. Ha ha ha.
Cara Lunsford (55:24.932)
Yes.
Melissa Pritchard (55:30.642)
so sensitive to that. And also the thing about nursing and what she contributed so greatly to.
when she first announced to her parents in her 20s, she had a, I don't know if everyone knows this, she had a mystical, what I call a mystical experience at age 16 at her parents' home in Embley Park. They had, they lived between two homes, but she was out in the, sitting on a granite bench between two giant cedar of Lebanon, I can't say it, Lebanon trees. Those trees are still there today. The bench is still there. You can go sit there if you like. You can go visit.
But she had a mystical experience where she, this is what she recorded in her journal privately, that she heard God speak to her and tell her that she was to help the suffering of the world. She was to leave, you know, God called her to alleviate the suffering of the world. God didn't speak to her again for 13 years. So she didn't know what she was supposed to do. Like, what am I supposed to do with this?
voice that I heard. And some biographers are very uncomfortable with the idea of God speaking to, you know, they're like that's, maybe it was a cycle, you know, they have all these reasons for it, or they called it an experience or something. We will never know. Each of us can decide for our own what happened to her on that bench, but it gave her this incredible energy and determination and will to overcome her parents' objections.
and announced when she decided that vocation that she was being called to was nursing. When she told her parents that, they couldn't have been more appalled or shocked because in those days, nursing was slightly above being a servant and only slightly above being a prostitute. It was the worst thing you could be, especially someone of what her mother considered their family's social standing.
Cara Lunsford (57:29.999)
Wow.
Melissa Pritchard (57:37.238)
Like, how could you possibly consider this? This is just scandalous and horrible and no, and they objected for many years and set up obstacle after obstacle to where she nearly lost her mind. And even you could infer that she had a suicidal tendency at one point because she was being so held back from what she was called to do. But she find, oh yeah, I mean, she went through years of real suffering.
Cara Lunsford (57:59.534)
Wow.
Melissa Pritchard (58:04.626)
as a young woman until she finally broke through and had helpers. And I would say that to anyone who's going through, you know, encountering objections or. Impediments to what they feel called to do in life, that. If you have the courage to keep going forward, you will find helpers, helpers will come forward who see who you are, who believe in what you're doing. She Florence had a number of them.
Cara Lunsford (58:26.884)
Yeah.
Melissa Pritchard (58:33.402)
not in her family, but who came forward and said, I see who you are. Her aunt said, this is a woman, this young woman is going places. She is going to be someone great. And she insisted that she get mathematical tutoring and all that. Then there was a childless couple who befriended her and took her to Rome, introduced her to influential people. She would work with later, took her to Egypt, where she had a number of uh...
actually that's where she at age 30 she said I've settled the matter with God. She had turned down marriage proposals. She said I'm going to do this. I'm going to do this. I'm 30 years old kind of like when I turned 30 and said I better do this thing. I'm not on the level of Florence Nightingale, but I mean maybe it's something about turning 30. But you will have helpers people will come forward. You don't even dream of to help you achieve your dream. So I.
Cara Lunsford (59:20.142)
Yeah.
Melissa Pritchard (59:32.618)
I think that's a beautiful part of her story as well. But she also went into nursing and then she began when she came back from the Crimea in 1860 with a fund that had been generated by the London Times. She founded the first school of professional secular nursing for women, paid, paid. Because before that there were Protestant.
Cara Lunsford (59:42.978)
Did I lose you? Oh, there she go.
Melissa Pritchard (01:00:00.702)
women groups that were starting nursing, you know, there were Protestant sisters, there weren't Catholic nuns. So if there were any women in nursing, they were affiliated with a religion. And Florence had a deep faith of her own, a bit unconventional, also prescient. Also, if I had the time to tell you about her faith, as I was reading about her tenets of her faith, I'm like, that's like me, that's like today, that's very modern.
That would have been considered heretical back in her day. She was interested in Hinduism, Muslim faith, Buddhism. She read everything. She had a whole view of divine intelligence that went way beyond the Anglican church. Yeah, she was like a comet coming through the sky. So anyway, she completely changed the face of nursing and suddenly women...
Cara Lunsford (01:00:33.216)
Yeah!
Cara Lunsford (01:00:43.299)
Oh my gosh.
Cara Lunsford (01:00:49.934)
This is amazing.
Melissa Pritchard (01:00:58.506)
were encouraged to come in, get training, professional training. They would be paid for what they did. It was respectable. She invented, I don't know if she invented the uniform, the nurse's uniform, but I think she saw that the nuns wore their uniform, the Protestant sisters wore their uniforms, and she got the idea, okay, we will wear uniforms as nurses because that gives us a moral and respectable standing.
Cara Lunsford (01:01:26.598)
Well, it's a profession, right? It, which maybe she was really part of helping kind of move away from nursing as a calling and nursing as a profession because I think that there's a little bit of, and even in today, yes, I think that there are people who are called to do this type of work.
Melissa Pritchard (01:01:26.698)
a respectability. It's a, yeah, yes.
Melissa Pritchard (01:01:42.742)
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Melissa Pritchard (01:01:56.231)
Mm-hmm.
Cara Lunsford (01:01:56.478)
or called to the profession. But if you don't refer to it as a profession and you only refer to it as a calling, then it sounds like something that you don't do for money that you don't do, you know, as a career.
Melissa Pritchard (01:01:58.963)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Pritchard (01:02:06.781)
Yes.
Melissa Pritchard (01:02:12.147)
Right.
Melissa Pritchard (01:02:15.453)
Right.
Cara Lunsford (01:02:15.714)
to take care of yourself, your family, you know, and then the work can sometimes be minimized in a way or not valued financially the way it should be because it's like, well, you're doing God's work or you're doing, and you're like, well, not exactly. Like.
Melissa Pritchard (01:02:19.735)
Yeah.
Melissa Pritchard (01:02:25.055)
Mm-hmm. Right.
Melissa Pritchard (01:02:30.794)
You're right. Yes.
Melissa Pritchard (01:02:36.234)
See, I think you're, oh you're so right about this, I love talking with you because I think she did, she did feel a calling, but then she moved that out into the world as a paid, underlined paid, profession.
highly respected for women. And so first Irish and British women came in, but then women started coming in hearing about this school at St. Thomas's Hospital and coming in from all over the world. I met a woman recently, well, she's a friend. Her great, great aunt came to study from the Netherlands, came to study with Florence Nightingale, went back to the Netherlands and started the Red Cross Movement. So,
There were thousands of women who came in from all over periods of time. And she was like seeding something, seeding something. I think, oh, the statistics, by 1908, there were over a thousand nursing programs and schools started in the United States due to Florence Nightingale from nurses who'd gone to study there.
Cara Lunsford (01:03:44.214)
This is amazing. This is just, Melissa, I could talk to you for three hours. No, honestly, I could. I just, I feel like I have so many questions. I'm like, okay, I think now I'm like, okay, how do I, I'm gonna have to do like a webinar series with you, like where I can like invite nurses to come and maybe at some point you would love to.
Melissa Pritchard (01:03:53.113)
I know.
Melissa Pritchard (01:04:09.127)
Yes.
Cara Lunsford (01:04:13.87)
come and speak at one of our conferences or something like that, because we, every year we do this thing called Wild on Wounds, and we, I know, but we attract all these wound care nurses, which, I mean, it's a huge conference. This year, it's gonna be in Arizona.
Melissa Pritchard (01:04:18.512)
Hmm
Cara Lunsford (01:04:38.534)
Um, the following year, I think we're actually possibly going to do it in North Carolina. I can't remember exactly if we've decided on a venue yet, but you would be such an amazing speaker to talk to these nurses about Florence Nightingale.
Melissa Pritchard (01:04:44.371)
Yeah.
Melissa Pritchard (01:04:47.851)
Ah!
Melissa Pritchard (01:04:53.822)
Yeah, yes, Kara, I would love nothing more. That is one of my big dreams about this book is that I can the book can be a kind of seed to go out to nurses because unfortunately, her image has been crystallized and, you know, turn into the stereotype, which isn't even true of her. And I would love to bring this full portrait of her because it's very inspirational. And I next month, I've been invited to speak at
the Edson College of Nursing in Arizona.
Cara Lunsford (01:05:25.542)
Really?
Melissa Pritchard (01:05:25.942)
It's part of Arizona State University where I used to teach creative writing. I'll be speaking to a group of nurses there about Florence Nightingale. I have a slide presentation all ready to go about her life, and then a short reading from the novel. So I'll be doing that. That'll be my pilot thing in next month. And I was telling my publicist, nothing I would love more than to go to colleges of nursing and groups of nurses and conferences and speak.
Nothing I would love more.
Cara Lunsford (01:05:55.478)
Melissa, we have, you know, I can't wait to, after this is done, which we'll wrap this up because we could talk for three hours. People are like, this is the longest podcast episode Kara's ever done. And I'll be like, sorry, we had to keep going. It's a three-part series. So, but you know, we are doing some really wonderful things at nurse.com.
Melissa Pritchard (01:06:05.695)
It will be. Yes, I know.
Melissa Pritchard (01:06:13.629)
I'm going to go ahead and close the video.
Cara Lunsford (01:06:24.61)
And we are working to do a little spoiler, I'll tell just to you, I'll edit it out before the episode goes live. But we're doing a project cocoon and...
Melissa Pritchard (01:06:24.819)
I know, I've looked.
Melissa Pritchard (01:06:31.802)
Yeah, okay.
Melissa Pritchard (01:06:38.51)
Hmm.
Cara Lunsford (01:06:40.218)
and where we're helping nursing school students kind of cocoon them and help get them through the first couple of years of their nursing school or their career because nurses are leaving the career at an astounding rate. So what I would love to do is that, are you familiar with Alice Benjamin? She's nurse Alice. She's on, she's, yeah, do you know her? Yes.
Melissa Pritchard (01:06:50.542)
Oh, yes. I know, I know it.
Melissa Pritchard (01:07:05.566)
I listened to that podcast. I just listened to that podcast. I'm telling you, I've been listening. Yes, yes. She's wonderful.
Cara Lunsford (01:07:08.906)
Okay, so Alice, Alice works with us. She works with us now and she is she's amazing. And she's America's favorite nurse because she's been on all of these different media outlets. And she's, she was on the television like several times a day during COVID. Talking about, you know, just answering questions.
Melissa Pritchard (01:07:19.046)
Right, right.
Melissa Pritchard (01:07:27.69)
Yeah.
Melissa Pritchard (01:07:34.082)
Mm-hmm.
Cara Lunsford (01:07:34.114)
about what was going on and this pandemic and all those things. Um, but she's doing this with me, this project cocoon she's doing with me. And so we're going to be going to nursing schools and talking at nursing schools, and it could be so amazing to have you kind of on this journey with us. Okay. Oh, this is, this is very exciting, Melissa. Like I, I've just enjoyed this.
Melissa Pritchard (01:07:37.154)
Mmm.
Melissa Pritchard (01:07:54.347)
I'm there.
I'm with you. I will be there. Me too. This is a dream. This is like a dream of mine. And the book's been doing really well. I mean, better than I ever expected. It's been getting all these starred reviews in New York. It's coming out in the New York Times Sunday, Easter Sunday, a review. It's kind of taken wings. The Wild Swan is taking. But and that's important in the literary world. I'm pleased because that's my world. But
Cara Lunsford (01:08:04.622)
Yes.
Melissa Pritchard (01:08:27.146)
All along, I have been like, oh, please, let me be able to speak to nurses about this woman and bring her into the present world as an inspiration to give strength and determination and bring people back into nursing because I've been studying that too, the fallout, the crisis. It's very real.
Cara Lunsford (01:08:36.74)
Yep.
Cara Lunsford (01:08:46.69)
Yeah, it's very real. It's probably the thing that I am most passionate about is bringing sustainability to this profession.
Melissa Pritchard (01:08:56.57)
Mm-hmm.
Cara Lunsford (01:09:01.314)
uh, safety, you know, to, for this to feel like a safe, sustainable, um, thriving profession, uh, not just surviving, which I think a lot of people are just surviving it right now. Um, but that they could really potentially thrive within this profession. And I think that in order to understand or plan for the future, we have to understand the past.
Melissa Pritchard (01:09:01.873)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, safety.
Melissa Pritchard (01:09:09.572)
Yes.
Melissa Pritchard (01:09:14.183)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Pritchard (01:09:29.315)
Mm-hmm. Yes.
Cara Lunsford (01:09:31.528)
are bringing is this level of understanding about where we came from in order to understand where we're going.
Melissa Pritchard (01:09:41.194)
Mm hmm. And a new kind of trailblazing is due into the future.
Cara Lunsford (01:09:45.23)
Yes, a new kind of trailblazing is due. And so I just, I'm so excited to bring you into this world of nurses. Nurse.com's been around for decades. It started out as a magazine, but then became Nurse.com in like the 90s during the age of the internet when it was like, okay, let's bring all of this and digitize it, put it online.
Melissa Pritchard (01:09:52.142)
Me too.
Melissa Pritchard (01:10:07.658)
Right.
Melissa Pritchard (01:10:11.395)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Cara Lunsford (01:10:14.458)
but it's been around for a really long time and we're actually having a bit of a rebirth as well. And so it seems very appropriate and timely that you would be on this journey with us. And I'm just really excited to see where this all goes.
Melissa Pritchard (01:10:19.748)
Uh huh, uh huh, uh huh.
Melissa Pritchard (01:10:29.426)
Oh, me too. I really honestly would love nothing more. And and as I told you at the very beginning, you know, I had this desire to be a doctor or a nurse or either, you know, and worked as a candy striper, but and volunteered in different hospitals. But this is getting really close. This is like a dream for me.
Cara Lunsford (01:10:50.21)
You're getting really close, Melissa. You're gonna, we'll just pull you into the nurse.com family and you can be a nurse by association and.
Melissa Pritchard (01:10:55.904)
Please!
Melissa Pritchard (01:11:00.15)
by association and yes with nighting speaking carrying forward the lamp which was you know I'll have the proper lamp now not the genie lamp that they show yeah there was a proper Turkish lamp so
Cara Lunsford (01:11:08.271)
Yes.
Cara Lunsford (01:11:14.074)
That's right. That's right. Well,
Cara Lunsford (01:11:20.026)
This has been so wonderful. I just want to tell you how grateful I am. I'm grateful to your publicist who reached out to me on LinkedIn and I don't know, I'm not always great about answering my messages, but I was so grateful that I saw that and answered it and we got you on here. And for anyone who wants to learn more about
Melissa Pritchard (01:11:22.225)
I know.
Melissa Pritchard (01:11:38.043)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Pritchard (01:11:41.671)
Hehehe
Cara Lunsford (01:11:47.686)
Uh, Florence Nightingale, you should check out this book, Flight of the Wild Swan. Spawn. I was like, I don't know. I was like, that's not right. That, that was not the right word at all. The Flight of the Wild Swan. Not a duck and certainly not a spawn. Um, and so, and.
Melissa Pritchard (01:11:52.908)
Mm-hmm.
Melissa Pritchard (01:12:04.32)
Wild swan, not duck, swan.
Melissa Pritchard (01:12:12.014)
Please.
Cara Lunsford (01:12:15.294)
It just came out, wasn't it like March 15th or something? 12th, March 12th it came out. So it's brand new, brand spanking new.
Melissa Pritchard (01:12:18.327)
March 12th it came out, yes.
Melissa Pritchard (01:12:25.834)
It'll be on an audio book next month. Also for people who don't, you know, I mean, I know I'm really I'm thrilled it's going to be an audiobook because I know a lot of people don't have a lot of time and, you know, they're commuting or whatever, walking. They listen rather than, you know, so.
Cara Lunsford (01:12:28.966)
Perfect. That's me. I'm all about the audio. I'm all about it. The audio book.
Cara Lunsford (01:12:44.218)
Who's reading it? Is it you?
Melissa Pritchard (01:12:46.65)
No, it's a British actress named Jane Entwistle, who's won a number of awards for her narrations. And they sent me a three minute clip of her voice and then another woman's voice. And I got to choose. And the first one was fine. She was good. But then I heard Jane. I was like, that's Florence. Oh my Lord. That's just the accent, the everything, the emotion.
Cara Lunsford (01:13:11.062)
Oh, that's so wonderful. Well, this is very exciting. I'm gonna let you go because I've kept you on for so long. I know, I know, I'm always kind of conscientious of people's time, but I just, again, wanna say thank you. And this will not be the last time we speak. I'll be reaching out to you very soon to schedule another call so that we can talk about all the wonderful things that we could be doing at nurse.com.
Melissa Pritchard (01:13:15.921)
I know.
Melissa Pritchard (01:13:19.721)
I haven't noticed.
Melissa Pritchard (01:13:28.866)
Thank you. No.
Melissa Pritchard (01:13:38.202)
Yes, and I will say yes to them all or as many as I can, because it's my, honestly, one of my aspirations, one of my own dreams, so we could work together to bring Florence as a, yeah, to life, and a true life, a true life, yes. All right, thank you, Kara. You're delightful, thank you so much. I'm honored, thank you.
Cara Lunsford (01:13:48.198)
That sounds wonderful to life, back to life a little bit. Yeah, yes. Yeah, absolutely. All right. You as well. Have a wonderful day. Bye.
Melissa Pritchard (01:14:02.71)
You too, you too, bye.
