Happy Nurses Week?

Happy Nurses Week to all my fellow nurses out there!  This is the week to celebrate our growth, accomplishments and the impact we have made on the health of the entire nation.

One thing that has bugged me about his week is how nurses have been kind of lost in the shuffle of the whole thing and it is now about the organization and not necessarily about the nurses.  At my hospital and several others I have worked at, it has now become National Hospital Week celebrations, with nursing as an afterthought.  Typical right?

All the celebration for the contribution of nursing has been extended to everybody else in the organization.  The Physical Therapists get the same recognition this week as the nurses do…..and then on Physical Therapist day they get it again.

I know we didn’t become nurses for the recognition; we did it for the perks like cleaning up stool, the smell of a necrotic wound and being put down my physicians.  But it would be nice if just that one week or even day a year that everybody else could step back and say thank you for all you do, and recognize that the hospital could not function if it were not for us.

I for one will recognize everything you all do and say thank you.  Thank you to the nurses that took care of my father when he had a heart attack, the oncology nurses that saved my mothers life when she had breast cancer.  Thank you to the NICU nurses that took care of my daughter for those four terrible and magical days.  Thank you to all the nurses that taught me what it really means to be a nurse by their positive, and negative, behaviors.  Thank you to all the nurses that work their tails off for our unit each and every day.  And, thank you to all of you for what you do for our patients.  I am humbled to be a part of the nursing profession.