Nurses should be celebrated every day, but there is no better time to reach out with extra love than during National Nurses’ Week, which is held May 6 through May 12. Nurses on the Tipton team pooled ideas on how to make this year special for your team. Please note that night shift nurses MUST be included in every event.
- Gracious Greetings. Nurse leaders should greet the staff at the beginning and end of each shift to say thank you and offer a small gift or treat.
- Create a Wall of Thanks. Create a wall of gratitude in a common area and enable everyone who walks by to write and post a note of gratitude to nurses.
- Portrait of Excellence. Hire a photographer and provide each of your nurses with a “professional nursing portrait”.
- Know Your Nurses. Nurse leaders can shadow nurses during the week to better understand their work routines and share their daily challenges and triumphs.
- Share a “Pal-entine”. Staff and leaders from across the hospital can write notes of gratitude addressed to individual nurses and nurse leaders throughout the week.
- Honor Your Nurses. Create something to honor nurses, a healing garden, a meditation room, or a quiet area.
- CNO at Your Service. The Chief Nursing Officer can schedule to meet with each department in the department. The nurses in the department can plan how they want to spend their time with the CNO.
- Hold a Nursing Pep Rally. Cheer on nurses from each department as they brag about their work. The Chief Nursing Officer can share photos from the past year: the good, the hard and the sad.
- Let the Docs Pick Up the Check. Partner with the Chief Medical Officer to create an opportunity for doctors to sponsor events throughout Nurses’ Week.
- Share Free Learning. Take advantage of Tipton Health’s free keynote address, “The Leader Within: Advancing Diversity, Equity & Inclusion”, presented by Tipton Nursing Executive Consultant Tommye Hinton MSN, RN, CPHQ, NEA-BC. Tommye shares insights from her decades of nursing leadership into how nurse leaders can identify their own implicit biases, as well as changes nurse leaders can make today to advance diversity, equity and inclusion in their workspaces. You and your team can watch the special presentation live on May 10, from 12:30-1:15 EDT and participate in the Q&A session, or you can watch a recorded presentation that will be available after May 10.