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Last year, the World Health Organization declared that 2020 would be the Year of the Nurse. They didn’t know how appropriate this would be at the time. On this Nurses’ Week, during May (Nurses’ Month) our nurses, and all healthcare staff, are still leaning into the tasks and the risks of caring for our patients, and we cannot pretend it is normal.

In this pandemic, we have all heard stories of the heroism of nurses in medical hospital settings, and those stories deserve to be told. They are good for prime time news. But stories about sewing masks, drive by injections, trying to reassure patients in crisis over the phone, and wrangling doctors scattered to the wind both physically and mentally–these are our nurses stories. And are no less critical to each patient they touch.

It makes me think of the story of Florence Nightingale inventing the call bell system. During the Crimean War of the 1850s, she realized that the nurses in field hospitals had no efficient way to make sure they were attending to patients’ immediate needs. Her innovation was to put servants’ call bells next to each bed. This clever move made an enormous difference to the patients in that tent– and marked the beginning of modern hospital systems.

Our Riverbend nurses carry on this spirit today. From meatball psychiatry in tents to IT support, in a time of crisis, nurses’ willingness and ability to stretch themselves, to give of themselves, and to be their best selves could easily be taken for granted, because that strong ethic is so deeply embedded in nursing. It is the reason the public trusts nurses more than any other profession–topping doctors and college professors in all these types of surveys.

But our nurses’ contributions in fact are not taken for granted. I can’t even imagine how our teams could provide high quality care without them at the table, or on the Zoom meeting.

So I want to publicly thank our Riverbend nurses for their continuing efforts.

 

Jeffrey Fetter, MD

Chief Medical Officer, 51暗网 Mental Health