Volume 5, Issue 5

In This Issue: Letter from the President | Nursing and CHB (Courage, Heart and Brains) | Team Morocco: Nurses Helping Nurses | Board Matters | Making the Most of Your Membership

In honor of Nurses Week, 6-12 May, and International Nurses Day, 12 May, this issue of Create the Future celebrates nurses!

Letter from the President

 
Dear honor society members,

The theme for this issue of Create the Future is Celebrating Nurses, in recognition of National Nurses Week, 6-12 May, and International Nurses Day, 12 May! This issue recognizes you for your dedication, hard work, accomplishments and making a difference.

Being a registered nurse is a profound thing – it is a core part of your being. Being a nurse means that a significant part of your time and energy is devoted to helping others when they are most vulnerable. You make a great difference in others’ lives. I think that is probably the most powerful thing about nursing.

The nurse of the 21^st century is also a careerist. You are well educated, with an incredible knowledge base in the sciences as well as the arts. You are critical thinkers, who must continually look for and analyze subtle changes in client’s conditions. You make independent nursing diagnoses, create plans of care, implement that care and then evaluate all the factors that have impacted a client’s outcome. Constant assessment and adjustment to the plan of care is the norm. Therefore you must be highly intuitive, observant and organized, as well as be able to prioritize and communicate effectively. You must be creative, since health care is provided in multiple settings with a variety of other health care professionals.

Nursing is hard work and requires dedication. It also requires emotional strength because no matter how good the care is, bad things can and do happen. Nursing also requires enormous flexibility ― no shift is ever the same, no two clients are alike and your responsibilities are constantly changing. You must be ever-learning and vigilant to ensure the knowledge base you use every day in practice is evidence-based and reflects the latest cutting-edge principles of quality care. You must also have a highly developed working knowledge of the technology that continues to fuel the current health care system. The challenge, however, is to use that technology as an adjunct to care, without losing the “human element” that is a critical part of nursing.

Nursing also requires courage. You must display courage every day when performing tasks and solving complex problems. You provide humanistic care and support when there is little hope. You must display tenacity when offering care after clients reject your actions or when acting on your beliefs and advocating for clients. The bottom line is that you are held accountable for all your decisions and actions and this takes incredible courage.

And finally, you have a unique perspective about health and illness that is a significant part of who you are and what you do. It is a blending of art and science ― a blending of “caring” and “curing.” Other professions blend these values to some degree, but it is the hallmark of nursing and what patients recognize and appreciate most about the nurses who care for them. It is important that you remember and appreciate these unique values because these values make our profession different from all the others. These values make nursing irreplaceable in the current health care system. 

I love being a nurse. It is more than I ever hoped to find in a profession. I feel that I have given to the profession, but I have not begun to repay what it has given me. My dream for all nurses to discover their unique place in the nursing profession...to develop a passion for their profession...and give as much to the profession as they receive. This celebration of nursing is in recognition of you!


Carol J. Huston
Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International
2007-2009 President

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