International Nurses Day

International Nurses Day, annual observance held on May 12 that commemorates the birth in 1820 of Florence Nightingale, the foundational philosopher of modern nursing. The event, established in 1974 by the International Council of Nurses (ICN), also serves to highlight the important role nurses fulfill in health care.

Nightingale became an important figure in nursing in the 1850s during the Crimean War. At that time she was stationed at the Barrack Hospital at Scutari (Üsküdar; now a district of Istanbul), where she headed a group of nurses that cared for injured British soldiers. When she first arrived at the hospital, she was struck by the desperate condition of the facilities, and as a result she imposed strict standards of care and ensured that the wards were kept clean and well stocked with food and medical supplies. Nightingale’s experiences at Scutari led her to campaign for reform in health care and nursing, and in 1860 she opened the Nightingale School of Nursing at St. Thomas’ Hospital in London. The school’s success prompted the establishment of similar training schools for nurses elsewhere. Among these early institutions were a nursing school at Sydney Infirmary and Dispensary (now Sydney Hospital) in Australia, which opened in 1868 and was headed by St. Thomas-trained nurse Lucy Osburn; the Bellevue Training School for Nurses in New York, which opened in 1873 and was the first institution in the United States founded on Nightingale’s principles; and a nursing school in Fuzhou, China, which was established in 1888 by American nurse Ella Johnson and was that country’s first Nightingale-based teaching institution. These pioneering schools provided a fertile foundation for the subsequent growth and advance of the modern nursing profession.

Each year the ICN commemorates International Nurses Day with the production and distribution of promotional and educational materials. These materials are intended in part to emphasize the dedicated and innovative work performed by nurses worldwide, which is vital not only to the improvement of patient health but also to the advancement of health care on national and international levels. The materials also often serve to raise awareness of issues in the nursing profession itself, including the impact of economic factors and ongoing struggles against inadequate pay and work conditions. Through awareness and action on such factors, nursing professionals hope to fuel growth and to strengthen nursing schools’ resilience to the sporadic and sometimes precipitous declines in enrollment that have characterized admissions patterns in many countries since the mid-20th century.

Promotional and educational activities on International Nurses Day are supported by an annual theme that addresses current issues in nursing. Examples of past themes include Nurses and Environment (1990), Working with the Poor; Against Poverty (2004), and Closing the Gap: Increasing Access and Equity (2011).

In Australia, Canada, the United States, and other countries, International Nurses Day often is part of a weeklong celebration, usually referred to as National Nurses Week.