Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around[horizontal ellipsis]. - --Leo Buscaglia, author
Depending upon when this journal issue arrives in your mailbox, we will be preparing for or celebrating National Nurses Day. Until I did a little reading, I either did not know or remember that this day of celebration is always on May 6 and marks the beginning day of National Nurses Week. The last day of National Nurses Week, May 12, is the birth date of Florence Nightingale. As we are in the process of celebrating nurses with recognition, awards, and gifts, what better time to celebrate what we do everyday as nurses.
Hopefully every nurse reader is thinking "I am glad and proud that I am a nurse." Several decades ago when I graduated from high school, those of us girls who were moving on to some type of higher education were going to be either nurses or teachers, that is just what the choices were back then. That was just fine with me because I had written my eighth-grade term paper on wanting to be a nurse. To this day, anytime I play the game with myself of what I would be if I was starting all over in a profession, I still would not change my mind. Whenever I have the opportunity to converse with nursing students or anyone who wants to be a nurse, I always find myself saying that nursing has been a very good profession for me.
It is rewarding to read the annual Gallup Poll (2007) and note that nurses consistently rank high; the public perceives us as having the highest honesty and ethical standards. This poll was initiated in 1976 and included 11 professions: advertising, bankers, business executives, car salesmen, clergy, congressmen, pharmacists, lawyers, medical doctors, nurses, and policemen. Other professions are included yearly on a rotating basis. Ratings in perceived honesty and ethics this year were down for clergy, medical doctors, congressmen, advertising, and business executives. The same downward ratings apply to the rotating professions of military officers, judges, and day-care providers. Only nurses have continued to gain significant improvement over the past several years regarding how the public views us as an honest and ethical profession.
Do any of you still have a spirit wear sweatshirt from our 29th Annual ASPSN Convention in San Diego in 2003? You may remember that the front has our ASPSN logo, plus "Nurses make the difference" and "ASPSN nurses are the difference," and on the back is printed "I Am a Nurse." Mine is a little faded, but I still wear it regularly. It is good advertising for plastic surgical nursing. A favorite story of mine describes what happened once when I was wearing my sweatshirt. I had stopped at a restaurant for lunch during a drive in Iowa. As an elderly couple in the booth next to me got ready to leave, the woman came over to my booth. She said that she could not help noticing my sweatshirt and she just wanted to say that she thought nurses were wonderful. Her husband was recently discharged from the hospital and she said that the nurses had taken such good care of him. Quite obviously I still remember and treasure that conversation with a total stranger.
The quote at the top of this message is from the front of a greeting card that I just purchased. Leo Buscaglia is the author of numerous books that have appeared on the New York Times Bestseller List, but doesn't everything in that quote sound just like what we do every day as nurses? We must not ever take ourselves and our profession for granted, and we must remember to find time in our often hectic, even chaotic, workdays and lives to reflect upon how proud we are of our profession and what we offer. Congratulations to all of us!!!!
Claudette J. Heddens, ARNP, CPSN
ASPSN President 2008
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