International Nurses Day (IND), observed on May 12 every year, is celebrated on the birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale, who is remembered as ‘The lady with the lamp’ for her undying commitment to the cause of healthcare.
It is also a day when the world applauds the nursing fraternity for their 24x7 service to promote health and to commemorate the valuable contribution in the form of their selfless services to the society.
When stating about nursing as a profession, one always gets the picture of Florence Nightingale, the pioneer of nursing profession. She was born in Florence, Italy, on May 12, 1820.
The daughter of upper-class British parents, Nightingale pursued a career in nursing, despite family objections, believing it to be God's will. In 1851 she received her initial training in Kaiser worth at a hospital run by an order of Protestant Deaconesses. Two years later she gained further experience as the superintendent at the Hospital for Invalid Gentlewomen in London, England.
Seek entrance
After reading a series of correspondence from the London Times in 1854 on the plight of wounded soldiers fighting in the Crimea, Nightingale asked the British secretary of war to secure her entrance into the military hospitals at Scutari, Turkey. He not only granted her permission but designated her head of an official delegation of nurses.
She was an efficient hospital administrator and compiled quantities of statistics in her drive for hospital reform: she standardised the reporting of deaths using Miss Nightingale's Scheme for Uniform Hospital Statistics. She has also been described as the 'the Passionate Statistician', and she wrote that Statistics is 'the most important science in the whole world.'
Nightingale wanted to make nursing a respectable profession and believed that nurses should be trained in science. She also advocated strict discipline, an attention to cleanliness, and felt that nurses should possess an innate empathy for their patients.
Although Nightingale became an invalid following her stay in the Crimea, she remained an influential leader in public health policies related to hospital administration until her death on August 13, 1910.
Healthcare demands
As healthcare demands are witnessing an upward trend, the theme for International Nurses Day 2012 seeks to develop the role of nurses worldwide in ‘Closing the Gap from Evidence to Action.’ Which rightly suggests nurses to constantly strive/engage and to use evidence-based approaches for nursing services? Today, health systems throughout the world are being challenged by inequities in quality and quantity of services and by reduced financial resources.
This year theme empowers nurses to identify what evidence to use, how to interpret the evidence, and whether the anticipated outcomes are sufficiently important to change practice and use precious resources that may be needed elsewhere.
International Council of Nurses believes that nurses are well placed to supply important information about context; about different systems, population group needs and the role of local politics and social factors.
The use of an evidence-based approach enables nurses to challenge and be challenged on an approach to practice and remain accountable.
It allows nurses to constantly review nursing practice and to seek new and more effective and efficient ways of doing things, thereby increasing access and to care and wellbeing.
On this day just take a minute to wish any nurse a Happy International Nurses Day! Who have really cared you which is really a modest way to show appreciation for all the dedication nurses bring to the profession each day.
Prof Jeetender Singh, Dept of Community Health Nursing, JSS College
Prof.Sheela Williams,Principal, JSS College of Nursing