Who Are Your Alltime Favorite Nurses?

[NRSKarenRN]

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."
  

[anie10]

Dr. Lorraine Anderson (my momma) who started nursing school at UCONN 50 years ago, last year.

She is an inspiration to me and there is too much to say and too little character allotment to give her the respect due.

[imintrouble, BSN, RN]

Miss Virginia. That's what my mother made us call her. Not nurse Virgina. Miss Virginia. She was the office nurse for DR Nodler in the 60s. The doctor who delivered my older brothers, took care of my mom when she required hospitalization for her depression, and was pediatrician to all of us until he retired.

She was his nurse Friday. She was starched from head to toe. She "swished" when she walked. As a little girl I thought she was remarkable.

I was awed by the whole white package. Cap to shoes.

I hated that doctor and that office. It terrified me. I can still see it and smell it.

She was the bright spot that almost made it bearable.