Today (May 12), the world pauses to celebrate the indelible contributions that nurses make to society.  This year, International Nurses Day is being championed under the theme “Our Nurses, Our Future”, a campaign to highlight the global health challenges and improve global health for all.

This day also marks the birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing who is popularly known for her role serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War in which she gathered care for the wounded soldiers, thus saving several lives.

Nightingale is a pioneer for modern nursing after establishing a nursing school in St Thomas Hospital in the United Kingdom in 1860. It has since been renamed as The Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery, which educate persons to become nurses and widwives.

Undoubtedly, there are many Florence Nightingale’s in our midst, working selflessly to treat the sick.

Nurses are everyday heroes of society, they not only care for the sick, but they wear many hats in the healthcare system as policy advocates, educators and researchers.

Nursing is not one of the easiest jobs there is, it oftentimes requires courage, patience and empathy to take on the tasks that the role entails.

With the right mindset and the will to help others, nursing can become a fulfilling career just to see a smile on a patient’s face or their journey back to recovery from an illness.

As we celebrate the nurses in our circle, let us cheer them on to continue making a positive contribution to society by saving one life at a time.

“Nursing is an art: and if it is to be made an art, it requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation as any painter’s or sculptor’s work; for what is the having to do with dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God’s spirit? It is one of the Fine Arts: I had almost said, the finest of Fine Arts,”

Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing

–Send feedback to vanassamckenzie @our.today