FCNIG Members: A Message for National Nursing Week 2020
This year of the pandemic, National Nursing Week will be celebrated and remembered with greater significance. More than ever we can acknowledge the unlimited sacrifices and contributions nurses have made working on the front-lines in response to COVID-19. Even though we are all focused on the more crucial challenges, we can benefit by pausing to reflect on what National Nursing Week means to us.
The World Health Organization has designed this year as The Year of the Nurse and Midwife to coincide with the 200th anniversary of Florence Nightingale's birth. Her legacy is especially relevant to faith community/parish nursing practice. She saw nursing as a deep spiritual "calling" from God, and her personal and professional experiences were grounded in her understanding of Christian theology and values. In addition, as the founder of modern nursing, she was ahead of her time in the understanding of the integration of the art and science of wholistic nursing practice. Today we can find strength and hope in her life and work, on this memorable anniversary.
The Flame of Florence Nightingale's Legacy
Deva-Marie Beck, PhD, RN
Today, our world needs healing and to be rekindled with Love.
Once, Florence Nightingale lit her beacon of lamplight to comfort the wounded
And her Light has blazed a path of service across a century to us,
Through her example and through the countless nurses and healers who have followed in her footsteps.
Today, we celebrated the flame of Florence Nightingale's legacy.
Let us take up our own lanterns of caring, each in our won ways.
May human caring become the lantern for the twenty-first century.
(Deva-Marie Beck is one of the authors of the book, Florence Nightingale today: Healing, Leadership, Global Action, published in 2005. She was the International Director, Nightingale Initiative for Global Health, Washington D.C. & Ottawa.)