Nursing is a profession that provides many opportunities for a variety of skills and passions. Nurses: Caring Today for a Healthier Tomorrow (the 2010 Nurses Week Theme) sums up some of that as nurses strive to provide quality care and patient education to people from all walks of life in many different settings and situations.
Nurses Week in the U.S. takes place each year from May 6-12. Like the profession, Nurses Week doesn’t follow the typical M-F work week. This year it begins on a Thursday and ends the following Wed. May 6 is National Nurses Day. May 12 is the anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale. You can read more about the history of Nurses Day and Nurses Week at the American Nurses Association site.
Start now to plan for events in your facility to honor your nurses. Get involved. Not all nurses are good event planners. Make something happen. It’s not going to be huge raises and longer vacations for the nurses, but it can be some positive, and uplifting experiences, at least for part of a day.
Get your patients involved. They would love to have a way to say thank you for the care you give them. With a focus on health care reform, the American public recently responded to a poll by Gallup and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that they want to hear MORE from nurses about health care issues and reform. Americans trust nurses to give them the education and information they seek about their health care issues and they want more. So let them also have a chance to say thanks.
