English Translation
Florence Nightingale is famous as the woman who began professional nursing.
Unnatural translation… Don’t overuse ～として more than once in the same sentence.
Also, the Japanese sentence misses the meaning of “the woman”. The English sentence doesn’t mean that Nightingale is the first person, but the first woman.
My alternative translation is:
フローレンス・ナイチンゲールは、看護婦の祖として知られている。（じょせいかんごふの「そ」としてしられている）
フローレンス・ナイチンゲールは、女性看護師の祖として知られている。（じょせいかんごしの「そ」としてしられている）
A “nurse” used to be called 看護婦（かんごふ）, which includes only female nurses. But we, in the modern era, prefer a gender-free expression 看護師（かんごし）. ～師 is usually regarded as a profession, not a volunteer. So, 専門職として is redundant when you say 看護師.
The example sentence is talking about a historical fact, so 看護婦 would be also okay in this particular context.
祖（そ）is a useful term. It means “the founding father/mother of, or the pioneer of a certain area”, and “the guru”. 祖先（そせん）means “ancestry”, and 祖国（そこく）is a “home country” (for refugees or migrant workers). All of them with 祖 have the connotation of “origin” or “bloodline”.