Every year America celebrates National Nurses Week from May 6, National Nurses Day, to May 12, the anniversary of Florence Nightingale's Birthday.  I think this year's theme "Nurses: Making a Difference Every Day" enables us to communicate how important nurses are to patient safety and quality care.  Many times our patients express their gratitude for the comfort we provide, but nurses are not always recognized for the important work they do with their patients.  I had the opportunity recently to hear Suzanne Gordon speak at a VHA CNO Conference.  She shared the story of how surprised she was (years ago) when she had her first child.  Her expectation was that her OB was going to be taking care of her while she was in labor, but through her experience at this time she learned what nurses did, and it was an eye opening experience for her. 

 Nurses are not known for publicly touting the great things we do for our patients, we don't consider what we do to be anything special.  From monitoring the medical condition to identify if the patient is stable or becoming unstable to assessing their response to both the medical plan and nursing plan for care, and for being a patient advocate when the patient needs you to be their voice, I want to thank CMC's nurses for the work you do for our patients 24/7.