10 nursing fun facts!

If you’re a nurse and you like fun and facts, you’re in luck! We’ve collected a slew of nursing fun facts (more than 100!) just for you.

These come in the form of quotes, jokes and regular old facts, and we’ll be presenting them in a series of 10 articles in the coming months.

We hope you enjoy these, and be sure to also add your own nursing factoids in the comments!

1. In 1846 the first hospital training school for nurses, the Institute for Protestant Deaconesses, was established in the town of Kaiserwerth, Germany.

2. The order of the Brothers of Mercy was founded in 1538 by Juan Ciudad. (b. 1495. d. 1550.)

3. The average annual earnings of RNs that have been on the job 5-9 years in 2014 is $58,616. The overall median pay for registered nurses (of all experience levels) is $65,470, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

4. According to a World Health Organization report, nurses and midwives can comprise between 50% to 90% of the number of health practitioners in many countries.

5. 17th century shipwreck survivor Juan de Mena is considered the first nurse in the New World.

6. Lucretia Lester was a midwife for 34 years, between 1745 and 1779, and is reputed to have helped deliver 1,300 children, of which only two were lost.

7. The fourth week of May is National Nurses Week.

8. There are about 2,711,500 jobs for registered nurses in the U.S., according to the latest numbers by the U.S. BLS.

9. According to an 2013 AMN Healthcare study, more than 30 percent of nurses work more than 40 hours per week, 13 percent work 46-50 hours per week and 8 percent work over 50 hours per week. The average number of hours worked per week for nurses is 42.

10. The demand for registered nurses is expected to rise 19.4 percent between 2012 and 2022.