It’s true we should celebrate nurses every week. Nurses remain the backbone of clinical care teams in a variety of ambulatory and inpatient settings. By the numbers, they are by far the highest percentage of the healthcare workforce today and Americans rate them as trustworthy and ethical in the latest opinion polls.

It is perhaps not surprising that the American Nurses Association (ANA) has designated one week a year where they pull out all the stops to celebrate nursing’s contribution to healthcare around the country. National Nurses Week is May 6 through 12, 2019, and it is six days of recognition for the nurses around us.

Honoring Nurses

Since 1993, nurses have been honored with a week of events and recognition of all they do to provide care and caring to their patients. Together, we celebrate our country’s more than 4 million registered nurses. The week always culminates on May 12, Florence Nightingale’s birthday.

National Nurses Week was designed for all of us to take a moment and celebrate the unique profession of nursing and the caregivers that make it their career there. Some of the best ways to celebrate include:

• Honoring nurses in the workplace with an event, ceremony or award. Recognizing publicly how important your nursing staff is will not only validate their hard work but also encourage others to pursue the profession.
• Give an award to honor time served or for service excellence. It’s a good opportunity to create new forms of recognition that highlight the best of an excellent profession.
• Hold an event and invite the community to participate. What better way to let nurses know you appreciate them than by inviting their patients to a public event? Asking staff, family members and patients to share stories of their interactions with a nursing team is a nice way of driving home the affect nurses have on the lives of people.
• Kick off new opportunities for nurses to develop their skills. National Nurses Week is a good time to encourage nursing teams to hone or improve on their existing skills. It can encourage nurses to pursue advanced degrees or certifications. It’s a good way to invest in your nursing team but also in the organization you serve.
• Bring in guest speakers for a week of educational and inspirational activities that highlight the profession of nursing.
• Involve patients and family members by asking them to create thank-you cards and paintings for nurses and post them in break rooms or in areas your nursing teams frequent. Take pictures of nurses with these heartfelt gifts and share those as well.
• Host a Nurse Appreciation Luncheon and give out tote bags of goodies to your teams.

Over the years MAS Medical Staffing has helped nurses find the best jobs in the best facilities in the country. We’re proud of these relationships and our efforts to help nurses excel in the profession they love. If you’re interested in talking to MAS Medical Staffing about a new role leveraging your nursing experience, contact us to start the conversation.