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Ah, Nurses Week: a time for hospital and clinic management to show us, their front-line troops, exactly how much we mean to them.
This year at my facility, we had donuts for two days, ice cream on one day and a potluck lunch/midnight breakfast (depending on shift) on the fourth day, with food provided by the nurses on each floor. And no, members of management did not come in to take over so that the nurses could have uninterrupted lunches.
Nurses Week makes me cynical and bitter. Just once, I would like to see something more than coupons for cookies showing up in my inbox. I’d like to have the week celebrated with something other than ice cream from the cafeteria handed out by the management. So this year, I’ve pared my wish list down to five easy and five tougher things that managements all over the healthcare system could give us for Nurses Week next year. Here are the five easy things:
1. A sandwich. Seriously. How hard would it be for management to skip the ice cream socials at two o’clock in the afternoon, when everybody’s crazy-busy, and buy us sandwiches for lunch? Or salads? Nurses are busy, nurses are health-conscious and nurses are aging as a population. Not all of us want sweets, some of us can’t have them and most of us would give at least one tooth for a decent lunch at a decent hour.
Next: Enough time, just for one day, to eat lunch. →
