How To Appreciate Nurses During Nurses Week

I spend most of National Nurses Week traveling and Speaking as a Nurses Week Guest Speaker helping appreciate and recognize nurses. National Nurses Week is celebrated annually from May 6, also known as National Nurses Day, through May 12, the birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing.

Nurses play a valuable role in society. Here is just some of the reasons they deserve a lot of respect and appreciation:

*Nurses work long hours and often can't get away to take a break, it is physically taxing. These hard working professionals deal with a lot of conflict and difficult people.

*Nurses care for people who are unable to care for themselves.

*Nurses are leaders advocating and speaking on behalf of patients and their families.

*Nurses make sure things get done, proper charting, lab tests, etc that physicians may miss

*Doctors and patients don't always take the advice of nurses and they need to deal with some difficult and emotionally taxing situations. Nursing requires great conflict management skills

*Nurses need to have the courage to speak up for patients rights, they can get attached to a patient and if the patient dies this is very hard. It can be hard to leave your work at work when you are so involved in a patients care

*Health care is a very dynamic and changing environment. Leadership and change starts on the front line with a nurses care.

*Nurses need to be a diverse generational speaker, understanding and speaking to their nuances and values especially in the x and y generation.

*Nurses provide leadership in healthcare. They need to be confident, professional and always "on". Their is not a lot of downtime in the health care industry

*Most Nurses take a lot of pride in their profession. They are an inspiration to the rest of us.

In the end of the day nurses help patients when nobody else could. They have the satisfaction of making a difference in peoples lives.

During Nurses week it is important to recognize nurses, actually it is important to appreciate them all the time, but nursing week is a good excuse.

When I am a speaker at nursing conferences, I ask the group to tell me the best recognition they have received. As suspected, the best recognition is genuine and unique. Rarely is it the awards ceremony or the gold pen. Timing is also important. The closer to the actual accomplishment the better. Ultimately you want to catch someone in the act of doing a good job

Some great examples collected from nursing conferences participants:

A thank you card with a sincere message from nursing leadership. For an added touch, send it to the family home, with flowers.

Involve the community. Write an article for a community publication and feature stories about nurses in your unit. Hold an open house and invite community members, have nurses share stories about their colleagues who have gone above and beyond.

A long term care nursing facility holds an annual Studs with Suds Event. On a hot day, leaders ( considered studs for the day) wash employees cars- with their shirts off. Since most of the leadership weren't really studs it made for very humorous conversation.

A gift card to a favourite coffee shop

On the spot recognition programs like a spontaneous standing ovation from physicians

Have motivational speeches from other hospital staff about the contribution that nurses make

Have Physicians bring nurses coffee

Have employees or patients and family members nominate someone for going above and beyond their call of duty- and have an informal recognition for the most nominations

Some nursing conferences have humorous ribbons that break the tension like Fearless Leader, Good Kisser, Slacker. They are great conversation starters and recognition pieces.

On a similar bend, you could have funny names for rooms like the Get me out of here! break room or a Fun room with basket ball hoops, a humour board, comics, a toy box with clown noses, rubber chickens and more
Hire someone to come in during nursing week and do funny caricatures of staff members

Give other professionals ( physicians, lab professionals, housekeeping, pharmacists) tools to help appreciate nurses. These can be gift cards to the cafeteria, candy, fun recognition ribbons and more.

Have a nursing week guest speaker come to make them laugh and add inspiration and learning to the event.

Remember there is no one right way to recognize people. The one size fits all approach is the least effective and often does more harm than good.