code blog: tales of a nurse

As the title says, it's Nurse's Week! I would link to my extra special favorite post that I always link to for Nurse's Week, but I can't get my site to load. Why, you ask? Because I'm visiting my family in the Midwest and the best I can do here at my mom's house is dial-up internet. Not only that, but the fastest it goes is 32.0Kbps! Thus, everything takes literally 5 minutes to load, and my site has pretty much given me the "talk to the hand" every time I try to go there. At least MT still works :-)

Because it is Nurse's Week, there's been some talk about updating the Florence Nightingale pledge for nurses. I assumed that Flo wrote it herself, but in doing some research, I found that it was actually written by Mrs. Lystra E. Gretter as a modified Hippocratic Oath and was then named in honor of Florence Nightingale.

In case you didn't have to recite it at your pinning/graduation from nursing school, here it is:

I solemnly pledge myself before God and in the presence of this assembly, to pass my life in purity and to practice my profession faithfully. I will abstain from whatever is deleterious and mischievous, and will not take or knowingly administer any harmful drug. I will do all in my power to maintain and elevate the standard of my profession, and will hold in confidence all personal matters committed to my keeping and all family affairs coming to my knowledge in the practice of my calling. With loyalty will I endeavor to aid the physician in his work, and devote myself to the welfare of those committed to my care.

It was written in 1893. Nursing has come a long way since then. I personally think that we're plenty mischievous these days! Nothing wrong with a few pranks at work! [And this is where I would link to my "pranks" post, but again - can't get to it. Sigh. How do people live like this???] And we give plenty of harmful drugs in the name of treatment (TPA, chemo, etc.) I'm not so sure about aiding the physician in his work - I think a more modern view of nursing is that we collaborate with physicians in taking care of patients, our work.

Infinia Foresight has taken on the task of finding out what modern nurses think of this pledge, and what we would change about it if we could. Would you change anything? If you'd like to take a red pen to our pledge, visit Rewriting the Nightingale Pledge and find out how you can submit a revised version. A few rewritings are posted here. Some have just a sentence here and there rewritten, and some look all painted in red with revision suggestions.

So go on out there in the big bad world and find a nurse to appreciate. And to my colleagues - happy nurse's week :-)