6
The Signature
Celebrating National Nurses
By Lt. Chereé Nagle, U.S. Naval Medical Readiness and Training Command Sigonella
E
very year from May 6-12, we take the time to celebrate National Nurses Week and honor the memory of Florence Nightingale, the foundational philosopher of modern nursing, who was born on May 12 in 1820. This year, the American Nurses Association (ANA) and the World Health Organization (WHO), extended the traditional week-long celebration to the month of May to fully recognize the contributions and vital impact that nurses have made and continue to make in the treatment of all patients during the global COVID-19 pandemic. From the early days of Florence Nightingale on the front lines of the battlefields of Crimea, where she risked her life to treat the ill and injured fighters, to our present-day nurses who have truly evolved in providing a wide range of care across all specialties and settings. Across inpatient and ambulatory care environments, nurses are highly trained, educated and specialize in over 33 clinical areas to include emergency medicine, labor and delivery, pediatrics, family medicine, and surgical specialties just to name a few. The list of nursing specialties continues to grow, as does the importance of nursing contributions to healthcare. Serving as a Navy Nurse Corps officer means providing high-quality healthcare to military personnel and eligible beneficiaries for routine appointments to the most critical medical conditions or injuries. You will find Navy nurses proudly treating
patients at U.S. and overseas military treatment facilities, as well as austere environments such as naval deployments at sea, embedded with deployed Marine units, and even during humanitarian aid missions on the ground or at sea aboard the USNS Comfort or USNS Mercy hospital ships. U.S. Naval Medical Readiness and Training Command (NMRTC) Sigonella, which includes clinics in Bahrain and Souda Bay, boasts over 52 military and civilian nurses who serve in a variety of inpatient and outpatient specialties. “Nursing is more than a job. It is giving oneself and a dedicated commitment to service and caring for others sometimes when they may be most vulnerable or in their most critical states,” said NMRTC Sigonella chief nursing officer Capt. Tracey Giles. “During the pandemic, we have seen nurses genuinely go above and beyond by working under arduous conditions with limited resources and becoming surrogate family members to COVID-19 patients when loved ones could not provide comfort and say their last goodbyes. During the height of the pandemic, many nurses faced the challenge of risking their health and well-being to provide continuous care to COVID-19 patients. Nurses showed up and persevered.” When celebrating the heritage of nursing, some of our local nurses shared some of their personal reflections and commitment. “The reason I love doing this job is that I know that I can make a difference in my patients’ lives during
