FLH will Celebrate Nurse’s Week with a Community Candlelight Vigil

In recognition of National Nurse’s Week 2019; May 6^th – May 12^th, Finger Lakes Health is organizing a candlelight event. A vigil will be held at Soldiers & Sailors Memorial Hospital, located at 418 North Main St., Penn Yan, on Monday, May 6^th, and at Geneva General Hospital, located at 196 North St., Geneva, on Tuesday, May 7^th. Each event is scheduled to begin at 7:30 p.m. with registered nurse, hypnotist, energy healer, and wellness coach; Mae Fox, as the guest speaker, and concluded by the candle lighting.

The central theme of this year’s week-long celebration is “4 million reasons to celebrate,” in recognition of the nearly four million registered nurses in the U.S., according to the American Nurses Association. All nurses in the surrounding Finger Lakes communities are invited, including; retired nurses, physician practice nurses, nursing instructors, and school nurses.

Since Florence Nightingale was seen on the battle fields of the Crimean War in 1854, tending to the wounded during nightly lamp lit rounds, the nursing profession has undergone considerable change. An English social reformer and statistician, Nightingale became one of the leading faces in bringing public health to the fore front in medical research.

The nurse honored as the “lady with the lamp,” and her 38 war-time volunteers, helped to usher in a new era of organization, sanitation, and treatment for a profession that now encompasses over 104 different fields of study, according to the National Institutes of Health.

From America’s first nursing colleges in the mid-19^th Century, to the clinical, advanced practice, community, surgical, family, and management health arenas of today, those on the frontlines of care have gone above on beyond the call of duty.

For their efforts, the U.S. government observed the first National Nurses Week in 1954, and later when President Ronald Reagan signed a joint resolution between Congress and the ANA in 1982, recognizing May 6^th as National Nurses Day. In 1993 the ANA designated permanent dates for the celebratory week.

To learn more information please contact Kara Lincoln, PT, DPT, at (315) 787-4657.

Help celebrate the dedication and hard work of nurses that enrich and save the lives of those throughout our communities!