The UConn Health Center’s annual weeklong celebration of its nurses returns with massage, yoga, teas, and ice cream to go along with a full schedule of workshops and lectures.
National Nurses Week started with RN Recognition Day May 6 and continues through May 12, the birthday of Florence Nightingale. This year’s theme is “Advocating, Leading, Caring.”
“I’ve always felt nursing is a calling,” says Chief Nursing Officer Ellen Leone. “We go into nursing because we want to help people and make a difference in people’s lives. We have the ability to work in all kinds of settings and roles. We are there welcoming new babies into the world, and helping people pass at the end of their life. And we are die-hard patient advocates.”
The Danforth O’Neil Fund, established in honor of the Health Center’s founding director of nursing, Claire O’Neil, and her parents, makes many of the Nurses Week programs possible. This year’s keynote speaker is Joe Tye, a leadership consultant to the health care industry. Tye presented “The Florence Prescription: Building a Culture of Ownership on a Foundation of Values” Wednesday, May 9, in Keller Auditorium.
“We try to offer a variety of educational programs throughout the course of the week,” Leone says. “We try to do things that are hot topics, things for nurses going back to school, and offer some care for the caregiver too. My favorite thing is to really honor nurses who have gone above and beyond.”
Some of the “care for the caregiver” offerings include 10-minute chair massages, roving office yoga, an afternoon tea tasting, and Leone delivering ice cream to her nursing units.
The Department of Nursing website has a complete rundown of the week’s events, which also include, for the first time this year, a candlelight memorial for staff members who have passed away in the last year. Among the honorees are Rick Michaud, an OR nurse trained in all aspects of surgical procedures who last worked in the endoscopy suite, and nurse anesthetist Rich Krajewski, who worked in many areas of the Health Center over his career and served with the U.S. Army Reserves in the first Gulf War.
Following the memorial service, pastoral care staff went to the nursing units to offer a blessing of the hands to caregivers.
“UConn nurses are extremely dedicated, not only to their patients, but to the organization,” Leone says. “I’ve always felt it’s the nursing care and interaction with the nurse that leaves a lasting impression on every patient experience. Quality of nurses within an organization is so important. That’s really the backbone of the reputation of the organization. We have always gotten great feedback, and we’ve gotten even more over the last couple of years.”
In addition to Nurses Week, the UConn Health Center is celebrating its 2012 Nightingale Award recipients. This year’s Nightingale Awards for Excellence in Nursing Gala is Thursday, May 10, at the Hartford Marriott Downtown.
There are approximately three million registered nurses in the United States. More than 600 of them are employed by the UConn Health Center, which also trains undergraduate and advanced practice nursing students. In recent years, nurse practitioners have assisted physician faculty in teaching Principals of Clinical Medicine at the UConn School of Medicine, offering a nursing perspective to a course designed to help students develop the skills to work in an interprofessional team.
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