Today brings to a close Nurse Appreciation Week 2013. Although the spotlight shines elsewhere for another 51 weeks before Nurse Appreciation Week 2014 rolls around, nurses will be appreciated by their patients and the doctors they work for every single day between now and then. And every single night too. Their work is often thankless, but it’s incredibly important. Compare what nurses do to a work of art. Nurses prepare the canvas. They sketch out the basic composition and lay in some preliminary fields of paint. Picasso or Michelangelo or Matisse then takes over with expertise and artistry, aided by nurses, who continue to work on the painting after the artist leaves the studio. They even do the framing. In the end, it’s Matisse or Michelangelo or Picasso who gets most or all of the credit, but even he knows he couldn’t have done it alone. Nurses are a vital and indispensable part of health care delivery. Every day should be Nurse Appreciation Day.
