A voice to lead: International Nurses Day 2022

Every calendar year, on 12 May perhaps, I acquire terrific satisfaction in celebrating and showing my appreciation for nursing colleagues functioning across the wellness and care process on Worldwide Nurses Day.  This day marks the start day of Florence Nightingale in 1820.

Many of us straight away imagine of Nightingale holding a lamp.  In your mind’s eye, if you know a small more about her background, you may put her in Crimea, encouraging the hurt British soldiers. Number of men and women – or much less than she warrants – know to credit rating her for the immensely important general public health leadership function which she performed.  She recognised that far too quite a few persons ended up dying from poor sanitation and the absence of productive an infection prevention management interventions.

It was not until eventually I started working in public health and fitness that I totally appreciated how Nightingale had used figures to realize important well being reform. Possessing collected healthcare facility mortality facts for 2 yrs, although out in Crimea, Nightingale applied a then revolutionary way to existing her results. Making use of her rose diagrams, she was able to illustrate that most men and women were being dying from poor sanitation and an infection, which was viewed as mostly preventable.

I also feel about the bravery and leadership of Mary Jane Seacole, a nurse whose operate and impression were dropped in time since of her color.  Seacole, born 23 November 1805, showed immense bravery in location up the British Lodge and in viewing the front line to give care to hurt soldiers through the Crimean war.

Her tale has eventually appear to light-weight and she rightly warrants to be remembered for her bravery, tenacity and inclusivity.  This is anything which has in no way been more vital to our nursing occupation, as we recognise the big inequalities which exist across our communities.

Celebrating nursing heritage

So, in 2022, we ought to celebrate equally Seacole and Nightingale, who shown that our nursing job could be a voice to direct. They were being courageous leaders, statisticians and community wellbeing pioneers who challenged the world to do issues in a different way to help you save and enhance life.

Our access to data has surely enhanced because the 1800s and so has our being familiar with of the big results in of premature morbidity and mortality. We have also highly developed our understanding of the evidenced primarily based interventions which can be applied to reduce preventable loss of life and ill health and fitness throughout the lifetime system, from preconception to more mature age. Even so, there is even now a inclination for our occupation to concentrate on the management and cure of disorder and ill wellbeing, fairly than us inserting an equivalent focus on avoiding, safeguarding and advertising the public’s well being.

As the world commences to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be important for the nursing profession to think about the classes learnt and what requirements to adjust to make it possible for us to truly develop back again much better and fairer.

The pandemic has provided us all with an possibility to see with higher clarity that all nurses perform an essential general public well being role, no matter of their speciality or placing. It is now critical that we build on this information and take into account the strategies in which we can acquire a larger function in avoiding illness, defending health and advertising and marketing wellbeing. The nursing profession will also perform an important position in addressing the widening well being inequalities which has been created ever clearer by the COVID-19 pandemic.

This Intercontinental Nurses Day I will rejoice nursing colleagues from the previous – a heritage we can be happy of.  I will also consider satisfaction in thanking all the colleagues in the current and upcoming who are building on our powerful keep track of document as a career and who are, collectively, a voice to lead.

Nursing is an incredible occupation and I am happy to be part of the most reliable occupation.  We nurses will perform an significant role in driving a decade of transformation and alter in the 2020s, which will result in extra folks living more time and healthier life, no matter of exactly where you are living and how your lifestyle begun. Centre to this achievement is for all nurses to see by themselves as public health and fitness gurus who, like Mary and Florence, can act with bravery and candour to increase wellness outcomes for all people.

Happy International Nurses Day!