Nurse and Medical Technician Week

  • Published
  • By Tiffany Jones
  • 17th Medical Group
GOODFELLOW AIR FORCE BASE, Texas --  The art of nursing has come a long way since medieval and ancient times. This fact is accredited to the work of Florence Nightingale during the Crimean War, 1853 to 1856. She came to be known as "The Lady with the Lamp" because she often would do nighttime rounds to visit sick and injured patients.

Each year, the Nurse Corps celebrates the work that our nurses and medical technicians do May 6 to 12. May 12 is Nightingale's birthday. Her work to train nurses and oversee patient care gave nursing a fresh professional image and instilled trust.

In the early 1900's, many of the nursing schools that were founded and based on teachings of Florence Nightingale closed. Nursing education shifted to "hands-on" work in the hospitals as cheap labor.  Formal education shifted away from nursing.  Numerous religious organizations founded hospitals and trained nuns and deaconesses to care for their patients. It was not until recent decades that the education of nurses moved to colleges and universities, and this enabled nurses to obtain a formal education and promote nursing specialties.

Modern nursing develops nurses with advanced degrees and can receive training in many different specialty areas. Nurses now work in acute care hospitals, long-term care, social work, home health, serve as legal advisors, school nurses and much more.

Each state has a set of rules and guidelines for practice called a Nurse Practice Act that governs nursing practice. Nurses must have a state license and pass a state exam to practice. Currently, there are 2.8 million registered nurses and 690,000 licensed vocational, or practical, nurses in the workforce today.

Each year, a nursing theme is developed and promoted. This year, the focus is on ethical practice and quality care. Every day, nurses and medical technicians face ethical dilemmas that can interfere with high quality healthcare delivery. Nurses must put aside their internal beliefs to better care for patients.

So why all the fuss over nurses and medical technicians? Why celebrate for an entire week? There is an element to the profession of nursing most people never see. They do not see the staff and nurse being chastised by patients for being late with a medication because he or she was alerting a doctor about critical lab results on another patient and preparing another for surgery. Most nurses apologize and move on because they do not want to make the patient feel unimportant. It may not matter that the unit is short two nurses this day and all are trying to care for more patients than they should.

Nurses and medical technicians are known for putting their own health and welfare aside to care for their patients. They are on the frontline of care, exposing themselves to disease. Many ask the question, "Could I have done more for my patients today?" Each day, patients are triaged to determine who needs to be seen first. Time is diligently managed to ensure that all orders are carried out as directed and to ensure that the order is safe for the patient and in their best interest. Nurses interpret lab results and determine patient care priorities to prevent patient harm. Nurses and medical technicians are at the bedside of hospital patients 24 hours a day.

These reasons and more are why we celebrate the nursing profession. Nursing is one of the most trusted professions due to the professional nursing ethics and practices developed by Nightingale.