For the nurses

It’s International Nurses’ Day about which Health Minister Tony Ryall says:

“Nurses are hugely valuable and are part of the backbone of our health service. There are currently just over 49,000 nurses practising in New Zealand.

The theme for International Nurses Day this year is ‘’Closing the Gap: From Evidence to Action.”

“There are many great examples of nurses identifying areas in our health service that need improvement, researching a solution and then changing the way they do things to improve health services for patients.

“For example, Sandy Bryant, a nurse at Wellington Hospital Neonatal Intensive Care Unit looked at their rates of bloodstream infections in babies, looked at the international best practice benchmarks and the unit has changed how they insert a central-line into a baby’s vein.

“Their rates are now below international benchmarks. Not only has this had significant benefit for babies and parents, the reduced infection rate also equates to around $500,000 a year in savings.

“Initiatives like this improve the quality of our services and better utilise our health resources.

District health boards are now employing 2,000 more nurses since November 2008.

Nurses usually appear well up any ranking of most-respected jobs, for very good reasons. It’s a highly skilled and demanding job – physically, emotionally and intellectually.

My mother was a nurse. Although, like most women of her generation, she stopped nursing when she married, she used nursing skills – and patience – in many ways throughout the rest of her life.