Shining the Light on all the Right - Emerging Nurse Leader

By Rose O. Sherman, EdD, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN

We are in very challenging times right now. Winston Churchill once noted that no crisis should go to waste. I thought about this as I read Bonnie and Mark Barnes’s new book Shining the Light on all the Right: Celebrating the Art of Nursing Around the World. It is the remarkable story of how they took their grief from their son Patrick’s death 20 years ago and created the world’s largest nursing recognition program – the Daisy Award. Now in their 20th year with this work, 1.6 million nurses have been nominated for the award and 136,000 award presentations have taken place globally.

Watching the nurses who cared for their son, Bonnie and Mark developed valuable insight into the key role that nurses play in the care of patients. Their work celebrates the role of nurses. The irony is that it has taken the COVID-19 Pandemic for the global population to understand how much the work of nurses matter. Nurses are front and center during this crisis which has been compared to war. They are doing their best work often at considerable personal risk. I rarely hear commentators anymore who limit their coverage to what physicians are doing – they talk about the nurses. They now understand that when patients go on ventilators – they rely on their nurses. They see nurses out testing patients. They see nurses advocating for more protective equipment and worried about a shortage of ventilators. So many nurse leaders have told me that absenteeism is at an all-time low. No one wants to let their team members down. The work is very hard but has never been more important. Nurses understand this.

Before this pandemic developed, the World Health Organization declared 2020 the Year of the Nurse. It seems more fitting now than ever. In just seven weeks, we will be celebrating national nurse recognition week. With the escalation of the virus, it is likely that this year’s celebrations will be different. They may need to be. But what won’t change is that many nurses globally will be receiving the Daisy Award for the extraordinary compassion they show to patients and families every day. My sense is that when COVID-19 is contained and it will be at some point – we will celebrate the role of nurses in the crisis. Patients globally will feel the way that Bonnie and Mark did as they developed their incredible legacy – all they wanted to do was to say thank you.

Read Rose Sherman’s new book – The Nurse Leader Coach: Become the Boss No One Wants to Leave