HJNO May/Jun 2024

42 MAY / JUN 2024 I  HEALTHCARE JOURNAL OF NEW ORLEANS NURSING COLUMN NURSING THE Louisiana State Board of Nursing joined the estimated 5 million actively licensed registered nurses in the Unit- ed States to honor our colleagues during National Nurses Week. National Nurses Week is historically planned around the May 12th birthday of Florence Nightingale, the founder of modern nursing. Nightin- gale was the daughter of a wealthy British family and dedicated her life to English social reform. Born in 1820, both she and her sister, Parthenope, benefited from their father’s advanced ideas on the importance of education for women, studying history, mathematics, classical literature, and phi- losophy. Nightingale’s most notable contribu- tion to modern nursing came during the Crimean War where she witnessed the horrific conditions in which injured sol- diers were treated. Medicine was in short supply, medical staff were overworked, basic hygiene was ignored, and infections were common and often lethal. More sol- diers died from typhus, cholera, dysentery, and malnutrition than died from their bat- tle wounds. These wartime experiences in- fluenced her later life and career when she advocated for sanitary living conditions for soldiers, sanitary design of hospitals, and introduction of sanitation in work- ing-class homes. The Nightingale Fund was set up in 1855 and, because of many generous donations, Florence had the funds to set up the first nursing school, the Nightingale Training School at St. Thomas Hospital. The first graduates of the program began working in 1865. Today, the school continues as the Florene Nightingale Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery at King’s College London. Her Notes on Nursing became the corner- stone of the nursing curriculum. It stands today as a historic foundation of profes- sional nursing practice advocating for the importance of properly educated nurses. 1 The 2024 theme for National Nurses Week was “Nurses Make the Difference,” honoring our nurses who personify the care and compassion we show patients every day, across the age spectrum and throughout the multitude of platforms where care is delivered. While most pa- tients interact with nurses through direct patient care, nurses also develop public policy for community health; advance the profession through research; and advo- cate for diversity, equity, and inclusion in achieving health outcomes. Following is a summary of how Louisiana nurses have and continue to make a difference in im- proving healthcare for our citizens: Nurses Make the Difference: National Nurses Week, May 6-12