International Nurses Day 2023

Posted by DS Medical on 11th May 2023

All around the world people will be celebrating on the 12th May to mark the contribution nurses make to society.

The 12^th May is a significant date as it is the anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale – the founder of modern nursing.

Who is Florence Nightingale?

Nightingale was a British nurse, social reformer and statistician best known as the founder of modern nursing.

After working in some challenging conditions including a cholera outbreak, Nightingale made it her mission to improve hygiene practices, which helped to significantly lower the death rate at the institutions she worked at.

She then worked in a hospital in Constantinople (now Istanbul) as a nurse during the Crimean War, implementing sanitation standards and showing compassion to the injured. Her work reduced the hospital death rate by two thirds.

Nightingale also helped create a Royal Commission into the health of the army. Her ability to translate data into visual formats to show how sanitation was key in healthcare was revolutionary, and her efforts to reform healthcare greatly influenced the quality of care in the 19th and 20th centuries.

FACTS ABOUT NURSING

There are 704,520 Nurses on the permanent NMC register (The Nursing and Midwifery Council) in the UK as of March 2022. (nurses.co.uk)
Of the 704,520 nurses registered with the NMC, 45.65% of these in the UK work for the NHS.
There are four key areas of nursing that students can choose to specialise in. These are: adult nursing, children's nursing, learning disabilities nursing or mental health nursing.
Nursing is confirmed as the most trusted profession in the UK. The poll found 89% of British people trust nurses to tell the truth, whereas just 12% trust politicians. (rcn.org.uk)
The word ‘nursing’ derives from the Latin, ‘nutrire’ which meant ‘to nourish’ and referred to mothers nursing or breastfeeding their children. This led to centuries of the use of ‘wet nurses’, women who would breastfeed other people’s children. (medicalstaffing.co.uk)
It is believed that the first recorded aspects of nursing place the inception of the profession during the height of the Roman empire, around 300 A.D. It was during this time that the Empire sought to place a hospital within every town under its rule. As such, there were many “nurses” during that time who assisted in in-patient medical care within the newly created hospitals, alongside doctors. (nursingschoolhub.com)
Today nursing is open to all genders, however, traditionally it has been a female-dominated profession. Male nurses were used on the frontlines in WW1, but they were known as ‘orderlies’ rather than ‘nurses’. (medicalstaffing.co.uk)
However, nursing is still one of the most gender-segregated jobs in the UK. According to the latest figures from the Nursing and Midwifery Council, of the over 700,000 registered nurses in the UK, just over 80,000 people are men (roughly just over 11%). (bradford.ac.uk)
The Royal College of Nursing is the world’s largest nursing union and professional body. They represent close to half a million nurses, student nurses, midwives and nursing support workers in the UK and internationally. (rcn.org.uk)
A recent study revealed that 146 nurses walked an average of 4-5 miles a day, during their 12-hour shift. To put this into perspective, the average UK adult walks a mile or less a day during the week. (id-medical.com)