The World Health Organization designated 2020 as the Year of the Nurse and Midwife to commemorate the 200th birthday of Florence Nightingale. Nightingale is known as the founder of modern nursing and it has been said that her compassion led her to treat all patients with respect. She gave her patients, no matter how ill they were or what their economic circumstances were, the best possible care.

This is what the volunteer nurses at the Jean B. Purvis Community Health Center in Butler demonstrate each and every day. They practice “the culture of caring,” the Volunteers in Medicine philosophy, that recognizes that healing begins when patients are treated with dignity and respect.

From the opening of the Center in 2008, retired nurses have volunteered their time, their wealth of experience and their caring hearts to serve the patients who seek medical, dental and mental health services at the Center. Many of those patients arrive embarrassed, hesitant — not wanting to seek “free” health care. They may have lost their jobs, their employer-paid insurance, or just are not offered insurance at their workplace. The volunteer nurses greet them, treating each of them with dignity and respect. They labor to allay their nervousness and anxiety. And they are overwhelmingly successful at this.

I am thankful for all the nurses on the frontlines, in long term care facilities, home health, public health and especially the volunteers at the Center. Virginia Henderson, a nurse theorist, penned these words; “The nurse is temporarily the consciousness of the unconscious, the love of life for the suicidal, the leg of the amputee, the eyes of the newly blind, a means of locomotion for the infant, knowledge and confidence for the young mother, the mouthpiece for those too weak or withdrawn to speak”. That is who nurses are.

Happy Nurses Week