TBT: Super Awesome People™ in History.
The Washington Post recently published a beautiful tribute to nurses who are risking their lives to help patients and assist doctors during the current pandemic. Nurses have always performed a wide-range of duties—medical, psychological, administrative, managerial, biochemical, and more—but their expertise, work ethic, and tireless patient advocacy have become even more vital in these unprecedented times as the United States suffers through its worst pandemic in a century.
“The novel coronavirus has changed the world, and it has changed what nurses do, too. They are deploying to unfamiliar hospitals, transforming their units into coronavirus triage, working in extreme conditions without proper equipment, running testing sites in remote locations, facilitating virtual goodbyes with dying family members, organizing protests against hospitals and the White House, and consenting to the reality that simply showing up might be fatal.”
Dan Zak and Monica Hesse, The Washington Post
Modern nursing practices began in the mid-19th century, and in the 150+ years since, nursing has evolved as an indispensable aspect of patient care. Nurses consistently rank among the most honest and ethical of all professionals, far outranking medical doctors, pharmacists, psychiatrists, chiropractors—and politicians, in general. Although many nurses have acknowledged feeling stressed, uncertain, angry, hopeless, exhausted, and fearful for their personal safety during the pandemic, they continue to step up, day after day, through untenable working conditions and painfully long shifts. Because that’s what nurses do—and what nurses have always done.
Florence Nightingale (photograph by Henry Hering) 
National Nurses Week protest organized by National Nurses United
Nurses in History
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was a well-educated woman from a wealthy British family who defied social conventions by becoming a nurse. In 1854 during the Crimean War, Nightingale and her team of nurses took over the care of British soldiers at a struggling military hospital. Within weeks the death rates plummeted as the nurses sanitized and ventilated the hospital and provided the wounded soldiers with nourishing food and efficiently administered treatments. Because of her nightly rounds visiting with soldiers and providing care and comfort, Nightingale became known as the “Lady with the Lamp”.
“If, then, every woman must at some time or other of her life, become a nurse, i.e., have charge of somebody’s health, how immense and how valuable would be the produce of her united experience if every woman would think how to nurse. I do not pretend to teach her how, I ask her to teach herself, and for this purpose I venture to give her some hints.”
Florence Nightingale, Notes on Nursing
In 1859, Nightingale published the book Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not as a guide to help in the practice of nursing others, with lessons learned during her experiences in the Crimean War. The book was the first professional book on nursing ever written, and although it was not intended to be a comprehensive guide, the book is still extraordinarily relevant in its approach to patient management, care, and recovery. The chapters cover such topics as Ventilation and Warming, Variety [of the environment], Cleanliness of Rooms and Walls, and Personal Cleanliness. Updated editions have been published as recently as 2019, and the full text of the First American Edition (1860) is available here.
Although Nightingale is credited as the first modern nurse, she is far from the only nurse to have left her mark on history. In the spirit of keeping this post relatively brief, here are links to “top nurses in history” articles from across the Internet, so you can learn more about other famous nurses, including Clara Barton, Virginia Lynch, Mary Eliza Mahoney, Dorothea Dix, and Walt Whitman (yeah, THAT Walt Whitman).
- Top Five Most Important Nurses in History (Besides Florence Nightingale) (nurse.org)
- 12 Badass Nurses in History You Probably Don’t Know (nursebuff.com)
- 9 Famous Nurses Who Made Their Mark on American History (rasmussen.edu)
- 7 Times Nurses Changed the World (blog.diversitynursing.com)
- List of Nurses (every nurse famous enough to have their own page on wikipedia.org)
Nurses Today
Every year, National Nurses Week in the United States begins on May 6th and ends on May 12th, Florence Nightingale’s birthday. The week is intended as a celebration of nurses in recognition of the extraordinary work they do, and that recognition is vital now more than ever. Calling nurses “heroes” or arranging military flyovers doesn’t solve the very real problems nurses and other healthcare workers are facing during the pandemic crisis. There are still shortages of PPE and a lack of sufficient COVID-19 testing, and as many states reopen nonessential businesses, nurses will likely fine themselves under a crushing second wave of infections.
This year, nurses have been prominent in worker-led movements as they fight back against dangerous working conditions, take a stand against protesters opposed to lockdowns, and organize online via social media. In a dramatic act of protest by National Nurses United, union RNs lined up dozens of white nursing shoes outside the White House, with each pair representing a nurse who has died of COVID-19 during the current pandemic because of insufficient PPE. You can help nurses in their fight for PPE by signing a petition to demand that President Trump use the Defense Production Act to increase the production of desperately-needed PPE for healthcare workers.
Other links of interest:
- In Memoriam: Healthcare Workers Who Have Died of COVID-19 (medscape.com)
- Nurses, Ethics, and the Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic (American Nurses Association)
- Nurses read names of colleagues who died of COVID-19 in protest outside White House (USA Today)
- The Nurse Who Changed My Life (today.com shares stories of incredible nurses as a thank you during National Nurses Week)
The current pandemic is far from over, but nurses around the world are doing everything they can to help their patients (and their patients’ families) get through these difficult and dangerous times. They truly are Super Awesome People™, and they deserve more than just “thank you”. They deserve safer working conditions, sufficient PPE, hazard pay, and respect. One meaningful way to show your appreciation: take the pandemic seriously, and do what you can to keep yourself and your loved ones from getting sick in the first place.