We at ARMStaffing hope you are having an awesome Nurses Week! The work nurses do is essential and deserves to be celebrated and acknowledged.

Let’s take a dive into some fun facts about this week of recognition!

It starts on May 6th, National Nurses Day.

Not to be confused with International Nurses Day, which is on May 12th (more on that later), May 6th is National Nurses Day and the kickoff to Nurses Week.

Nurses Day was first conceived in the 1950s by Dorothy Sutherland, a member of the Eisenhower administration. However, Eisenhower never made a proclamation, thus it was never recognized at the time.

And it wouldn’t be recognized for quite a while. It took until 1982, when President Reagan signed an official proclamation for National Nurses Day.

Nurses Week was originally in October.

We celebrate Nurses Week in May, but that wasn’t always the case. The first unofficial version was observed in 1954 and was done so in October. The dates were from October 11th through the 16th. It marked the 100th anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s work in the Crimean War.

It wasn’t made official until 1993.

After being unofficially recognized in 1954, Nurses Week wouldn’t be made official until 1993.

The ANA Board of Directors declared that an entire week be used to recognize the great contributions nurses have made to our world. May 6th through the 12th would be the new chosen dates for this ‘Nurses Week’. The dates were moved to coincide with National Nurses Day and…well, let’s just segue into our next fact, shall we?

The final day, May 12th, is Florence Nightingale’s birthday.

The final day of Nurses Week, May 12th, is an important one. It’s not only International Nurses Day, as mentioned above, but also Florence Nightingale’s birthday!

Florence Nightingale is considered the mother of the nursing profession. Her work in the Crimean War paved the way for how nursing is practiced today. We wrote about Nightingale last Nurses Week, so be sure to check that out too!

With Nightingale being such a pioneer of the profession, it’s no surprise her birthday marks the grand finale of Nurses Week!