Editor's Note

A time to celebrate
For National Nurses Week, recognize the wealth of benefits that nursing offers
Beth Ulrich, Ed.D., RN, South Central Editor
April 30, 2001

National Nurses Week is a time for us all to celebrate our profession and show our pride in the work we do.

Being a nurse isn’t easy. The hours are long. The work is hard. The pay is good, but not great. But, oh, the rewards we receive and the joy we feel when we do our jobs well. National Nurses Week seems to be a good time to think about the positive aspects of nursing.

Nurses are valued by society. A Gallup Poll released in November found that the nursing profession ranked highest in honesty and ethics. This is the second year that nursing has come out ahead of other professions such as medicine, pharmacy, teaching and engineering.

Nurses develop great flexibility. You never know who your next admission will be and when it will come. You do know that planning your shift means that you prioritize what absolutely, positively has to be done, because the odds are good that whatever plan you make will change frequently as crises arise.

Nurses know how to multi-task. It has been said that one of the strengths of Generation X individuals is that they can do many things at once. Nurses could teach people from any generation the fine art of multi-tasking. When, as a nurse, have you ever had only one thing to do at a time? Such a luxury is unheard of in our profession. In fact, many of us have been called adrenalin junkies because we crave high stress and challenging situations.

Nurses can be anything they want to be. One of the great benefits of nursing is the diversity of opportunity it affords us. Experienced nurses have so many options in direct care, education, administration, the pharmaceutical industry, the legal community, care management, etc. The world has come to know our secret—that if you can successfully manage a patient load (especially given the barriers that crop up), you can do almost anything. What we learned in school as the nursing process, we now recognize as the system to work through most problems regardless of whether they are related to health care.

Nurses have job security in an insecure job market. While all around us companies are laying off employees, it’s rare to find a nurse being laid off.

Nurses have rewarding careers. We need to communicate this loud and often; otherwise, the youth of our country will not consider nursing as a career choice. The upcoming generation, often called Generation Next, which even now is making career decisions, have indicated that its No.1 ambition is to help others. Have we got a job for them!

Unfortunately, these young people know little about what we do and where we do it. Persuading them to select nursing requires that we share with them our success stories, tell them how we have individually and collectively contributed to people’s lives and convey the pure joy we feel when we help others.

A challenge: It is easy these days to get caught up in what’s wrong in nursing. Like any other profession, we have things to improve. But during National Nurses Week, let’s all take time to think of what’s right, what being a nurse has given to each of us and what we have been able to give to others.