When my mother was critically ill in a hospital in Indianapolis last year, my father was there for long hours each day. Worried and tired one evening, he left the hospital through an unfamiliar door and couldn't find his car.
He had been walking up and down the rows in the parking lot for a while, when a nurse coming to work saw his anxiety and stopped. She asked enough questions to figure out that the car was in a different parking lot, and she took him there.
When I called that night to ask about Mom's condition, Dad said: "The nicest thing happened today. I lost my car in the parking lot, and this nurse helped me find it."
I was grateful but not surprised that a nurse would apply her reasoning skills and penchant for caring outside the workplace. As Julie Churchman, an emergency department nurse at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta said, "Nurses live their skills full time." They don't check them at the door when they clock out.
May 6-12 is National Nurses Week, a time to honor and thank nurses for the work they do. The American Nurses Association established the dates in 1993 to coincide with the birthdate (May 12, 1820) of Florence Nightingale, who is considered the founder of modern nursing. Born into gentility and well-
educated, Nightingale entered nursing in 1844, despite her family's objections that it was a less-than-respectable profession. She helped make the profession respectable, and her "Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not," published in 1859, is still read today.
As Marla Salmon, dean of the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University, said: "Nursing is a public good. It's a resource for all of us."
This month, remember to thank all the nurses in your life — not just the ones at the hospital or the doctor's office. You'll find nurses in all kinds of places: chaperoning your child's field trip, testing blood-sugar levels at a church health fair, teaching CPR to coaches or volunteering at community clinics. Nurses could be our co-workers, our neighbors, our siblings or our best friends. Whatever the relationships, our lives are better for what they do.
On May 9, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution will honor nurses at its second annual Celebrating Nurses awards event. We're proud to congratulate this year's 10 finalists: Alison Ellison, Egleston Hospital of Children's Healthcare of Atlanta; Maxine Follmer, Georgia Cancer Specialists in Atlanta; Traci MacDonald, Georgia Mountains Hospice in Jasper; Sharie McCune, Emory University Hospital in Atlanta; Christine Nell-Dybdahl, The Emory Clinic; Stephanie Rollins, Athens Regional Medical Center; Rebekah Rabinowitz, Emory's Winship Cancer Institute in Atlanta; Connie Trent, Sawnee Primary School in Cumming; Quinetta Williams, Northside Hospital in Atlanta; and Christina Woods, Egleston Hospital of Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.
Look for profiles and photos of the finalists in the Celebrating Nurses special section in the AJC on May 6. Three Nurses of Excellence will be named at the awards banquet on May 9 and will be featured in next month's Pulse.
- Do you have any story ideas for Pulse? Tell us about your career and what you do after hours. Send e-mail to pulseeditor@ajc.com or call 404-526-2078.