Florence Guinness Blake was a 20th century pioneer in nursing education, advocating for better training for nurses. Blake's contributions to medical training and education helped elevate caring for patients to a professional level.
Blake had a special interest in caring for children, and dedicated much of her work to pediatric nursing and pediatric nursing education. She taught in the field and went on to found and oversee an advanced pediatric nursing graduate program at the University of Chicago, the first of its kind in the United States. In addition to teaching, she also wrote, edited and contributed to nursing textbooks. In the 1950s, she penned and published "The Child, His Parents and the Nurse," a book designed to explain the parent-child relationship from infancy through adolescence, as well as address her belief that parents should be involved in the medical care of their children -- concepts that are still a central part of nursing and nurse education today.