To say that being a nurse has changed since the days of Florence Nightingale is an understatement. Gone are the days of women in dresses tagging along with a physician simply to carry charts and take vitals. Today, nurses are the backbone of the American healthcare system - our knowledge, skills, and commitment establish the foundation of patient care.

It is often said that doctors cure, and nurses care. How true. Our daily role requires compassion, critical thinking and an interest in pursuing quality care for our patients and their families - qualities that Florence Nightingale introduced, and why she is credited with founding the modern nursing profession. In a nutshell, today’s nurses facilitate their patients’ efforts to reach their fullest health potential.

Perhaps the biggest advance in nursing today is that nurses are attuned to the whole person, not just their unique health problems. We practice a new concept called Patient Family Centered Care. It’s the closest thing to putting ourselves in our patients’ shoes. We directly involve patients and their families in the plan of care. We assess their fears, goals, expectations and perceptions to better meet each patient’s needs. We make them part of the care team.

Nurses no longer take problems at face value. We look for the underlying cause because careful questioning can make the difference in an accurate diagnosis and a more favorable outcome for each patient. It can mean discovering a medication error, providing quick intervention to alleviate pain or detecting symptoms in their early stages. Looking deeper can mean the difference between life and death.

Today’s nurses embrace change. Better technology and the advent of multidisciplinary teams are transforming the way nurses function. We are being equipped with better resources - like computer charting; then we are taking the lead in implementing these resources in order to provide quality patient care more quickly and shorten the length of hospital stays so patients can back to their lives in good health sooner.

Most people associate nurses with hospitals, but hospitals are just one of the many areas where today’s nurses practice. Other settings include home care, private practice, public health, extended care centers, clinics, offices, schools, military service, corporations, health-related industries, hospice, occupational settings, and health and wellness centers. Other nurses are going a step further and becoming nurse practitioners, who like physicians, are specializing in areas such as family medicine, cardiac care and transplant medicine.

Another advance in the profession is that nurses are no longer confined to the bedside. We can be found in professional venues once thought impossible. Nurses influence legislation, change healthcare delivery systems, write and publish, educate about disease prevention, facilitate support groups and participate on boards of directors.

According to the American Nurses Association, there are nearly 3 million registered nurses in the United States today. In celebration of National Nurses Week, May 6 - 12, I congratulate and salute my peers in nursing on their accomplishments. What we do is extremely demanding and always evolving, but it is very rewarding, especially when our patients do well. Be sure to thank a nurse this week.

MCG Health, Inc. (d/b/a MCGHealth) is a not-for-profit corporation operating the MCGHealth Medical Center, MCGHealth Children’s Medical Center, the Georgia Radiation Therapy Center, and related outpatient facilities and services throughout the state. For more information, please visit mcghealth.org.