The Way to Honor Nurses: Listen to Our Advice
Tuesday, May 12 would have been Florence Nightingale’s 200th birthday.
As Nurses Week draws to a close, I want to celebrate you and the 58,363 patients across the state that you’ve helped recover from this deadly disease.
We’ll have to wait for our time to properly honor your service and sacrifice during this crisis.
But in the meantime, we’ve been carrying your message forward, that New York can’t afford another outbreak, and we need to reopen responsibly.
On the first day of Nurses Week, we launched NYSNA’s Plan to Move New York Forward. I encourage you all to share our platform far and wide.
The reception has been overwhelming, and demonstrates just how much the public trusts nurses to protect the health of our communities.
From a lengthy article in the New York Daily News to coverage in amNY and Noticias NY1, our message is coming through loud and clear: nurses must have a seat at the table if we’re going to keep New Yorkers safe.
More than 40 media outlets covered our kickoff press conference at Brooklyn Hospital, along with the speak-out organized by Rikers Island nurses that same day.
And upstate we’ve kept the issue of staffing front and center, with coverage of our protests against staffing cuts by St. Elizabeth Hospital in Utica.
There have been so many important moments during Nurses Week this year. But I wanted to close with the sentiments of NYSNA member Liesel Van Ledjte, who gave a moving testament at our Westchester Medical Center vigil last week.
We will never forget those we’ve lost, and we’ll never stop fighting for our patients and the communities we serve.
In solidarity,
Pat Kane, RN
Executive Director