Year of the Nurse and Midwife
Celebrate the Year of the Nurse and Midwife with us as we pay homage to paediatric nurses past and present.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) designated 2020 as the Year of the Nurse and Midwife, in honour of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale.
Nightingale is known as the founder of modern nursing. In 1860, Nightingale opened the first secular nursing school in St Thomas's Hospital, London, where nurses were trained to place the patient at the centre of care, a principle that remains at the centre of hospital care today. She emphasised the importance of good hygiene focusing on handwashing, wound care and proper nutrition for patients.
Nightingale was instrumental in rethinking hospital design and ward layouts, advocating for the importance of fresh air, natural light and separation between patients to reduce the spread of disease. She pioneered the statistical documentation of disease and was one of the first to use infographics to communicate important clinical information to those with poor literacy.
Our hospitals, the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children (now The Children's Hospital at Westmead) and the Sydney Children's Hospital, Randwick, both have direct links to Florence Nightingale. Today, our advocacy for nurses and their training and their contribution to world-class paediatric care here at The Sydney Children's Hospitals Network owes much to Nightingale.
To celebrate, we're planning a range of events including morning teas for each and every ward, professional development opportunities and a photographic project documenting the friendly faces of our nurses.
And every month, we'll bring you a video where the patients interview our nurses. Watch the first one now.
Official hashtags for the Year of the Nurse and Midwife are #YearoftheNurseAndMidwife #IND2020 #VoiceToLead #SupportNursesAndMidwives
You can follow our story on #ComeCare4Kids