Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably heard that 2020 is officially the Year of the Nurse. Why 2020? Well, this year marks the 200th birthday anniversary of Florence Nightingale, the mother of nursing.
Florence Nightingale, the First Modern Nurse
Florence is celebrated in part for her efforts during the Crimean War in the mid-to-late 1850s, where she served as a nurse leader and educator to care for wounded soldiers. Today, she is known as the founder of “modern” nursing.
What does that mean? In addition to founding the first secular nursing school in the world—located at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London—she was a pioneer of social reforms, including advocating for better hunger relief programs, working to abolish discriminatory prostitution laws that were asymmetrically harsh on women, and expanded then-appropriate forms of female participation in the workforce.
She was a major proponent for cleanliness and had a strong focus on quality care in care environments, paying more attention to the environment as well as the care delivery. She was also a prolific writer, often writing in simplified English so that those people less educated could increase their medical knowledge.
For us at Trusted, this also means taking what Florence started and adapting it to fit the advancements and challenges of our time. How? By making 2020 the Year of the Modern Nurse.
What is the “Modern” Nurse?
The Modern Nurse values community, personal and professional growth, and flexibility; is passionate about creating different and sustainable expectations for the profession; and, leverages technology and advancements to provide the highest quality care available. The Modern Nurse doesn't appear, dress, work, or live in any specific way; they're a dynamic professional who has hobbies and passions integrated into and beyond nursing. The Modern Nurse is a leader, a mover & shaker, curious, lifts expectations, and challenges the status quo daily.
The modern nurse is the coordinator and the connector of the evolving health care system.
What are We Doing for the Year of the Modern Nurse?
Accordingly, in addition to honoring Florence’s legacy, we’re using this year to highlight all that nurses are, have been, and will be in our society. Accordingly, 2020 is our time to celebrate the efforts made by nurses everywhere to improve health conditions globally; recognize and reflect upon the challenging conditions nurses face in practice, whether they be physical, emotional, or mental; and, then take strides toward increasing and better caring for the existing nursing workforce.
As traditional nursing roles expand in scope and nurses find themselves working in direct patient care or building healthier communities in a variety of other ways, there has grown an entirely new set of challenges for nurses to solve. Now more than ever, nurses are relied upon to use their unique skill sets to progress in ways that health care hasn’t for decades.
At Trusted alone, nearly 20% of our full-time teammates are nurses who, despite working away from the bedside, continue to challenge the status quo in the nursing industry through their work as Nurse Advocates. Within their non-traditional nursing roles, they bring the experience of 61 facilities, 43 certifications, 15 medical mission trips, 34 hospital councils, 25 travel assignments, three DAISY Award nominations, and over 45 publications.
Not to mention they support hundreds of nurses every day to find their professional passion, connect with opportunities to grow careers, and troubleshoot the small stuff so that Trusted Nurses can deliver the best care possible!
We’re honored our Nurse Advocates chose Trusted, where they can impact health care, especially with the huge variety of interesting nursing careers out there: from Legal Nurse Consultant to Forensic Nursing to Telehealth to Nurse Informaticist to Entrepreneur. The scope of practice is ever expanding, and the opportunities (and demand) have never been more plentiful. Let’s push the boundaries of what people think nurses can do and make 2020 the most progressive and exciting year yet.
We’re ready. Are you?
In the following three parts of our 2020 Year of the Nurse series, we’re going to discuss topics from celebrating nurses who embody the “Modern Nurse” to sharing ways in which we can better invest in resources to support this amazing profession. Continue on to Part II of this series.
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