Alberta Nurses reflect the ideas of Florence Nightingale in modern care

Florence Nightingale, the celebrated English social reformer often credited with being the founder of modern nursing, believed the profession was all about advocacy.

She famously advised: “Let whosever is in charge keep this simple question in her head (not, how can I always do this right thing myself, but) how can I provide for this thing to be always done?”

The language is old-fashioned, but the sentiment is thoroughly modern. 

National Nursing Day falls on May 12, the date of Florence Nightingale’s birthday in 1820, and since 1993, Canadian nurses have celebrated National Nursing Week in the week that includes that date. This year, National Nursing Week will run from May 6 to May 12.

As always, for members of the United Nurses of Alberta, which represents more than 26,000 Registered Nurses working in public, private and not-for-profit workplaces in Alberta, Nursing Week is an opportunity to think seriously about advocacy – for our patients and for our profession.

So UNA members will celebrate Nursing Week by doing what they do all year ’round: Advocating for their patients in hospital wards, nursing homes and other care sites, and advocating to protect and enhance Alberta’s fair and effective public health care system.

“Our goal is always to improve Alberta’s public health care system so that you and your family can be confident you will always be looked after in the event of illness or injury,” says UNA President Heather Smith. 

That, she said, is why nurses continue to press for seniors’ care to be recognized as part of a well-run public health system. And that is why nurses have negotiated provisions in their Alberta collective agreements that allow them to speak up without fear of reprisal to ensure professional nursing responsibility standards are adhered to in their workplaces.

Only the right to collective bargaining, and the protection provided to nurses by union membership, can make this effective and determined patient advocacy possible, said Smith.

“Wherever UNA nurses gather – in homes, in clinics, in hospitals or nursing homes – we are proud to be working for Albertans and advocating to protect the safe, high-quality care that they receive.”

National Nursing Day was first designated by the International Council of Nurses in 1971 and was recognized by the Canadian government in 1985. National Nursing Week was declared by the government in 1993.

Florence Nightingale is best known for taking a staff of 38 volunteer nurses to care for wounded British soldiers during the Crimean War in 1854. She became known as the “the lady with the lamp” after the Times of London wrote that “she is a ‘ministering angel’… When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.”

Nightingale’s selfless dedication and her accomplishments in improving the quality of medical treatment at great personal risk in primitive wartime hospitals are emblematic of the vital role nurses play in our health care system.