International Nurses Day is celebrated on May 12th, in honor of the birthday of Florence Nightingale. Like many of the nurses we work with in Kurdistan, Florence spent the formative years of her nursing career serving during a time of war. In the 1850s, when she was in her 30s, Florence was stationed in Turkey to care for British soldiers wounded in the Crimean War. Her experiences during the war compelled her to campaign for changes in healthcare and nursing—ultimately leading her to open the world’s very first scientifically based school of nursing in 1860.
We can’t imagine a better way to celebrate International Nurses Day than to support the new Nursing and Midwifery Development Centre in Kurdistan! It’s the perfect continuation of Florence Nightingale’s mission: educating nurses and midwives to improve patient outcomes and, ultimately, to change the Iraqi healthcare system from the ground up.
Has the Heart of a Nurse Touched Your Heart?
You or someone you love has likely experienced the care of a nurse—you might be a nurse yourself! Your main connection with nurses may be small interactions in your primary care provider’s office or they may be larger experiences during a time of serious medical need. In large and small ways, nurses touch our lives and the best nurses touch our hearts. Nurses are the beating heart of healthcare.
Nurses are often the first, last, and most frequent care providers that patients see when they are in need of medical care. The work of a nurse is equal parts science and art and it takes years of study and experience to do the work well. To fulfill their call to care, nurses need ongoing training and support.
This is especially true in Iraq and the Kurdistan region of Iraq. A small number of nurses in Iraq have formal training and hold nursing degrees. But many nurses serving today were trained for wartime needs—dressing wounds and not much else. These “dressers,” as they are known, are among nurses of all training levels who want to serve their patients well.
We have an opportunity to invest in their education to help them take the very best care of their patients.
In honor of International Nurses Day on May 12th, Nurses Heart to Heart is planning a major donation to fund the training of nurses and midwives at the Nursing and Midwifery Development Centre that just opened in January 2024 in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
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