Find Your Inspiration to Advocate, Lead and Care! Registered nurses have always embodied the theme for this year’s National Nurses Week: "Advocating, Leading, Caring". When R.N.s visit the American Nurses Association (ANA) this Spring, they can’t help concur with its President, Karen Daley that ANA is their quintessential advocate; video galleries, pledges and other resources on the site show that celebrating a nurse’s calling is about so much more than remembering to wear a pin this week. Capture the spirit during May 6-12 and take it with you the rest of the year! It’s empowering to reflect on the amazing history of your vocation. Before the nursing career path became what it is today—the #1 career advertised on U.S. News & World Report’s List of Best Careers in 2012—nurses worked in relative obscurity. It’s hard to believe fewer than 20 R.N.s attended the first ANA convention in 1896—even more surprising that back then, they weren’t technically R.N.s. There were no laws licensing nurses at that time. This International Nurses Week, thank ANA for helping R.N.s become the backbone of American healthcare! Look at how far this profession has come, employing more than 3 million [+]

Nurses, this one’s for you! National Nurses Week 2010 gets underway on May 6, providing an opportunity to acknowledge the hard work and selfless care of  RNs throughout the country. This year’s nurse week theme, Caring Today for a Healthier Tomorrow, “exemplifies nurses’ caring and professionalism -- be it at the bedside or in the halls of Congress,� said ANA President Rebecca Patton in her National Nurses Week message. The theme seems particularly fitting in this era of sea change and unprecedented growth in the health care industry. And perhaps no one has experienced these changes more than the travel nurse, who is on the front lines of providing health care everywhere -- from hospitals to schools, clinics to home settings. “Nurses give so much to this society, and our travel nurses really step up to provide a crucial service,� notes  Deborah Bacurin, RN, clinical resource manager at American Traveler. “Nurses Week reminds us all to stop, and take some time to show our hard-working nurses their due appreciation.� These little celebrations are part of a movement that has been almost 50 years in the making. National Nurse Week was first observed in October 1954, but did not [+]