Today world celebrates International Nurse Day. As the protagonist of Malayalam movie “Take off” mentions “We have been called earthly angels, but that’s all we have, no one actually cares”. What we know about them and their life are too little.
Nurses welcome us into the world, help us stay for as long as possible and often comfort us in the end, but it’s an open secret that, they are often overworked and under-supported.
Those professional stresses often affect their personal lives, taking a toll on finances, relationships and mental health. Female nurses have a suicide tendency of almost three times than the rate for women in other jobs.
It can be a gloomy picture for those we can’t live without, but still, there are more than 360,000 nurses in India, You probably know a few.
History
International Nurses Day is celebrated on May 12 to remember the birth anniversary of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing. In 2017 the theme is set to ‘nursing: A voice to lead – Achieving the sustainable development goals’.
Nurses day was first proposed by Dorothy Sutherland, an official with the US Department of Health, Education and Welfare. In 1953, she approached President Dwight D Eisenhower requesting, a day to be dedicated completely to ‘Nurses’.
However got rejected. Since 1965, as a tribute to Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing, International Council of Nurses (ICN) celebrates her birthday as ‘Nurses Day’. It was only in 1975, the day was officially announced as International Nurses Day.
Since then, ICN distributes a special kit called the ‘International Nurses’ Day Kit’ that is stuffed with educational and public information materials.
Born on May 12, 1920, Florence Nightingale was an English social reformer and statistician and is also known as the founder of modern nursing. Her work came into the spotlight while serving as a manager of nurses during the Crimean War.
She was worked round the clock in the service of wounded soldiers. She became an icon of Victorian culture and was popularly known as ‘The Lady with the Lamp’ as she would make rounds in the soldiers’ ward at night with a lamp.
She was also a versatile writer and has penned down several books on medical knowledge in simple English so that even those with poor literacy skills understand it. Most of her work on religion and mysticism has been published posthumously.
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