The Power of Healing is the Nurse

May 8, 2015

Telling the story of nursing is like telling the story of everyone who has been ill, been in an accident, or has held a vigil at the bed of a loved one whose last moment shall never be forgotten.  Almost every one of us has been touched by a nurse, starting with the day we are born.

Every patient knows that the person with the power of healing is the nurse.

Each May during National Nurses Week, I think of Florence Nightingale, whose mission to establish nursing as a professional skill and expertise changed healthcare forever. Her activism shifted the nature of domestic caregiving into a level of professionalism that even she could not have predicted.

Yet, the role of the nurse is as broad as the human condition is in need.

The Nightingale Initiative for Global Health (NIGH) makes real the original vision of health being a human right — one that is not limited to ethnicity, nationality, social standing, or economic. Its “Daring, Sharing, and Caring” campaign celebrates and shares solutions to the high rates of maternal death still happening around the world.

Watch this short video, which tells the stories of nurses and midwives.

The legacy of nursing as a caring modality is passed on not only from nurse to nurse, but from nurse to patient. Jean Watson, PhD, RN, AHN-BC, FAAN, has taken on this legacy and developed the theory and science of human caring that puts into language and practice what nurses are already doing.

In this spirit of legacy of caring, Healing HealthCare Systems is working with Dr. Watson and the Middle-Eastern Nurses United in Human Caring to bring global peace through the spirit of Florence Nightingale, the wisdom of nursing, and those who have taken on its mantel.

Also, if you have not done so, please join thousands of nurses who are committed to healing our communities by signing the Nightingale Declaration for a Healthy World.  The Declaration is a cornerstone under an emerging long-term global campaign for “Mobilizing Public Opinion for the Health of Nations” that is required to achieve “a healthy World by 2020” — the Bicentennial of Nightingale’s birth.

What better way to celebrate the founder of modern nursing during National Nursing Week?

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