Who Are Your Alltime Favorite Nurses?

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

NAHC and HHNA Celebrate Nurses during National Nurses Week

Washington, DC (May 6, 2014)--To celebrate National Nurses Week (May 6-12), the National Association for Home Care & Hospice (NAHC) and its affiliate Home Healthcare Nurses Association (HHNA) salute nursing as our country's most trustworthy field. Americans share our faith in nurses, according to Gallup's 2013 survey of "Honesty/Ethics in Professions."

Eighty-two percent of those polled rated nurses' honesty and ethical standards as "very high" or "high." Nursing came in 12 points above any other profession, a result that should come as no surprise. Nurses have topped the list for 14 of the past 15 years.

"Nurses consistently get these top marks because of their empathy, professionalism, and compassion," said NAHC President Val J. Halamandaris. To mark this year's National Nurses Week, he has listed his all-time favorite nurses:

• Florence Nightingale responded to a divine call by providing health care for the ill. She would make nursing a respected profession, and a personal mission, based on her belief that you should "simply do the thing that is good in itself."
  
• Clara Barton was an angel of the battlefield who nursed soldiers during the Civil War. Afterward, she founded the American Red Cross to fight wars, disasters, and "any evil that is adding to the sum of human suffering or diminishing the sum of happiness."
  
• Lillian Wald organized volunteers to nurse immigrants at home in turn-of the-century New York. The experience led her to earn fame as the mother of American home care and inspire millions with these words: "Nursing is love in action, and there is no finer manifestation of it than the care of the poor and disabled in their own homes."
  
• Annie Wauneka was a leader of the Navajo Nation and activist for public health. She convinced her people to accept Western medical ways, improved their sanitary conditions, and defeated tuberculosis in the tribes. Her crusade demanded endless work, but she knew that "if something is not right, you must do something about it."
  
• Mother Teresa was teaching English at a Calcutta convent when she heard God's call to serve him among the poorest of the poor. With the pope's approval, she founded a religious order to care for the dying and ill. "We are in the same business," she told Halamandaris when they met in 1985. "I am a home care and hospice nurse."
  

[herring_RN, ASN, BSN]

I admire all your choices Nurse Karen.

Lavinia Dock was an amazing leader in nursing. With Lillian Wald she was instrumental in creating the specialty of Publuc Health Nursing.

In the late 19th and early 20th century nurses were expected to be subservient. They were to follow orders blindly knowing just enough to do as they were told.

Often medication bottles and containers didn't have the name of the medication, just a number and directions for an individual patient.

Lavilia Lloyd Dock wrote "Materia Medica for Nurses" in 1990. It was the very first pharmacology book for nurses because she knew nurses must be educated so we could advocate in the best interest of patients.

She was a great social activist leading in the struggle for women's voting rights, for education children and against child labor, against prostitution, for safe working conditions, and for birth control education.

I hope every nurse will read any edition of "A Short History of Nursing" by Lavinia Dock. She teaching the autonomy of the nursing profession along with patient and social advocacy.

She was a founder of the International Council of Nurses, contributor to the AJN, and an example for us all. We have a lot to learn from her brilliand independance that she share with all nurses.

She lived 98 years.

This site lists other accomplishments: http://www.aahn.org/gravesites/dock.html

Lavinia in her 50s as educator

Lavinia honored by ANA in 1956

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

Thanks Herring. Just to clarify, these nurses are the selection of NAHC President Val J. Halamandaris.

As a visiting nurse, I've always been fascinated with Mary Breckinridge + Frontier Nursing Service

Mary Breckinridge founded the Frontier Nursing Service in 1925 after several years of studying and practicing nursing and midwifery in the United States, England, Scotland and France. It was the first organization in America to use nurses trained as midwives collaborating with a single medical doctor/obstetrician, based at their small hospital in Hyden. Originally the staff was composed of nurse-midwives trained in England. They traveled on horseback and on foot to provide quality prenatal and childbirth care in the client's own home. In 1939, Mrs. Breckinridge established a school of nurse-midwifery. The school provided graduates, many of whom stayed to offer care to families in Leslie County, Ky.

Today, Mrs. Breckinridge's legacy extends far beyond Eastern Kentucky through Frontier Nursing University (FNU), which offers a Doctor of Nursing Practice degree and a Master of Science in Nursing degree with tracks as a Nurse-Midwife, Family Nurse Practitioner and Women's Healthcare Nurse Practitioner. FNU has students and graduates serving all 50 states and many countries.

[NRSKarenRN, BSN, RN]

Herring

Lavinia Docks textbook Materia Medica for Nurses is available online!

[LadyFree28, BSN, LPN, RN]

Mary Eliza Mahoney and Mother Theresa.

[LadyFree28, BSN, LPN, RN]

Mary Eliza Mahoney

In 1879, Mahoney became the first registered black nurse when she graduated from a training program in New England. As a student, she had endured 16 hours of backbreaking labor every day, seven days a week. The program was so difficult that only three students out of the entire class of 40 graduated. And Mahoney was one of them (along with two white nurses).

Effectively, Mahoney proved that African Americans could not only become nurses, but that they could do the job with excellence, compassion and efficiency. The world of nursing would never be the same.

Mahoney went on to co-establish the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses in 1908. And in recognition of her contribution to the nursing profession, in 1936 the American Nurses Association instituted the Mary Mahoney Award, to be awarded to nurses who go above and beyond when it comes to integration and equal opportunities for minorities in the field of nursing.

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

I don't know any of those nurses! My all time favorite nurse was the LPN who taught me just about everything I learned in my first few years of nursing, even though she wasn't my preceptor and had no responsibility for educating me. She just saw me flailing and stepped in with a subtle bit of advice here and a whack over the head (when I needed it) there. Some things she showed me by example, some things she demonstrated and sometimes she lit into for NOT doing something she thought I should have done. Other times, she'd chat "idly" about how someone else did it THAT way, and how well that worked out and how she was going to try it that way next time. She was awesome, and I thought she knew everything.

[LadyFree28, BSN, LPN, RN]

I don't know any of those nurses! My all time favorite nurse was the LPN who taught me just about everything I learned in my first few years of nursing, even though she wasn't my preceptor and had no responsibility for educating me. She just saw me flailing and stepped in with a subtle bit of advice here and a whack over the head (when I needed it) there. Some things she showed me by example, some things she demonstrated and sometimes she lit into for NOT doing something she thought I should have done. Other times, she'd chat "idly" about how someone else did it THAT way, and how well that worked out and how she was going to try it that way next time. She was awesome, and I thought she knew everything.

Great point, Ruby.

We cannot forget the nurses in the trenches, who have shaped and continue to shape nurses by paying it forward!

[CaliBoy760]

My mom. She received her LVN in 1970 and her RN in1985...

[Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN]

I admire the LPN and 2 RN's who took a new grad and made her a nurse.

I admire my head nurse in ICCU...MAK

I admire my first nurse educator and Clin Spec...MK who is now MK DNP

[elkpark]

Lavinia Dock is my nursing hero, since nursing school a kazillion years ago.

Also Flo, of course.

And Edith Cavell.

A lot of nurses I've known personally over the years.

[nursej22, MSN, RN]

Margaret Sanger