The Work That Never Leaves You: Celebrating National Nurses’ Week

A reflection for the nurses who show up, and the patients who remember them

By Megha Shah, DNP, RN, OCN Published: May 2026 | Est. reading time: 10 minutes

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There is a particular kind of knowledge that only comes from being present at someone’s most vulnerable moment. Nurses carry that knowledge every day, often without naming it, often without much ceremony. This week, we name it.

National Nurses’ Week runs from May 6 through May 12 each year, closing on the birth date of Florence Nightingale. It is a week the profession observes with varying degrees of fanfare, and nurses themselves receive it with characteristic ambivalence: grateful for the acknowledgment, slightly uncomfortable with the spotlight, quietly hoping the staffing ratios improve more than the gift baskets do.

This article is written for two audiences at once. For the nurses reading this: it is a reflection on why the work you do matters, and a few thoughts on how to receive this week with something approaching the grace you extend to others every day. For the patients and caregivers reading this: it is an honest account of what nurses actually do, and some genuinely meaningful ways to express appreciation that do not require spending anything you do not have.

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Why We Observe Nurses’ Week

National Nurses’ Week was officially designated by the American Nurses Association in 1993, though recognition of the profession had been championed in various forms since the 1950s. The May 12 end date honouring Florence Nightingale has been observed internationally since 1965.

It exists because nursing is the largest health profession in the United States, with more than four million registered nurses currently practicing, and because the work of the profession is persistently underestimated by those outside it and persistently undervalued by the systems within which it operates.

Nurses’ Week is not a solution to those structural problems. But it is an annual reminder to pause, to look clearly at the people doing this work, and to say, out loud and on the record, that it matters.

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What Nurses Actually Do

Ask most people what nurses do and you will hear something about taking vital signs, administering medications, and being kind to patients. All of that is true. It is also roughly equivalent to describing a pilot as someone who sits in the front of the plane.

Nursing, at its full scope of practice, is a clinical discipline built on assessment, critical thinking, advocacy, education, coordination, and the kind of relational skill that cannot be taught entirely in a classroom. Here is a more honest picture.

Clinical assessment and early detection. Nurses are often the first to notice when something is shifting. In oncology settings, that might mean recognising early signs of sepsis in an immunocompromised patient, catching a medication interaction before it causes harm, or identifying a pattern of symptoms across treatment cycles that warrants escalation. This is not task execution. It is clinical judgment developed over years of practice and refined by every patient encounter.

Patient education and health literacy. A physician may have fifteen minutes with a patient. The nurse has the cumulative time across every infusion, every phone call, every moment in the hallway before the appointment begins. In that time, nurses translate complex medical information into something a frightened person can actually use. They explain what the nausea medication is for and how to take it. They walk through what to monitor at home and what to report. They answer the questions patients were too anxious to ask the doctor.

Emotional presence and psychological support. This is the dimension of nursing work that is hardest to quantify and most likely to be taken for granted. Sitting with a patient who has just received a difficult prognosis. Holding steady in the face of anger that has nowhere else to go. Being the consistent presence in a system that can feel impersonal and overwhelming. This is skilled work. It is not incidental to nursing. It is central to it.

Care coordination and systems navigation. Nurses are connectors. They liaise between specialists, coordinate referrals, communicate across shifts, and ensure that what the oncologist said in the morning is understood, documented, and acted upon by afternoon. In fragmented health systems, nurses are often the thread that holds the whole picture together.

Advocacy. Perhaps the role least visible from the outside and most essential to the patient. When something is not right, the nurse is often the person who says so. When a patient cannot speak for themselves, the nurse speaks. When a care plan needs to be questioned, the nurse asks the question.

If you have ever felt truly seen and cared for in a medical setting, there is a reasonable chance a nurse was responsible for a significant part of that experience.

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A Note to the Nurses

If you are a nurse reading this, there is something worth saying directly to you this week.

The work you do is not just technically demanding. It is emotionally and morally demanding in ways that are rarely acknowledged by the institutions that depend on your commitment. You absorb other people’s fear. You hold the weight of outcomes that were never in your control. You come back the next day and do it again.

Nurses’ Week will bring you some combination of balloons, breakfast spreads, discount codes, and social media posts with stethoscope graphics. Receive all of it with whatever warmth you can manage, and know that this article is not interested in platitudes.

What you deserve is not a free coffee and a thank-you email from administration. You deserve safe staffing, adequate pay, a functional electronic health record, and a culture that treats nursing knowledge as the clinical asset it is. You deserve to practice at the full scope of what your education and experience have made you capable of. You deserve systems that protect your well-being with the same rigour applied to patient safety metrics.

Advocating for those things is not ingratitude. It is professionalism. This week, alongside whatever celebration comes your way, name what you need and ask for it.

In the meantime, here are a few ways to mark the week that may actually be useful.

Let a colleague know specifically what you value about them. Not “you are great,” but “the way you handled that family meeting last Thursday showed real skill and I want you to know I noticed.” Specific acknowledgment lands differently than general praise.

Take a break when one is offered. This sounds small. For many nurses it is not a small thing at all.

Reflect on one moment from the past year that reminded you why you chose this work. Not to romanticise it, but to reconnect with the version of yourself that brought something particular to this profession. That person is still in the room. It is worth occasionally looking up from the workload to remember that.

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A Note to Patients and Caregivers

If you are a patient or a caregiver reading this, you are likely here because someone in your life is navigating cancer treatment, or because you are navigating it yourself. The nurses who have cared for you, or who are caring for you now, will probably not be recognised in the headlines this week. But you may know exactly who they are.

Here is how to express that recognition in ways that are genuinely meaningful, without spending money you do not have.

Say it out loud, and say it specifically. The most powerful thing a patient can offer a nurse is specific acknowledgment. Not just “thank you for everything” but “I want you to know that the way you explained my medications on that first day made me feel like I was going to be okay. I have thought about that a lot.” Nurses carry those moments. They are the ones recalled on the hard days. If you have something like that to say to someone, this is the week to say it.

Write it down. A handwritten note, a card, a short letter. Something that can be kept. Digital messages are meaningful too, but there is something about a piece of paper with your words on it that sits differently on a desk. It does not need to be long. It needs to be true.

Tell the charge nurse or the manager. If a nurse provided care that made a real difference to you, contact the unit manager or the clinic director and tell them. Most nurses are called to a manager’s attention when something has gone wrong. Hearing that something went profoundly right, in specific terms, is something a good manager will make sure that nurse knows. This costs nothing and the effect on someone’s professional life can be lasting.

Leave a review or complete a patient experience survey. If your care facility sends patient satisfaction surveys, complete them thoughtfully and name the nurses who made a difference. These surveys feed into institutional evaluations that affect how nursing care is perceived and resourced. Your voice in those processes matters more than most patients realise.

Simply acknowledge the person, not just the role. Ask your nurse how they are doing and mean it. Remember a detail they mentioned from a previous visit and ask after it. Treat them as the full human being they are, not just a function within your care. In a job that can feel relentless and impersonal, that recognition is not a small thing.

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Oncology Nursing in Particular

Oncology nurses occupy a particular position in the nursing landscape. They are with patients at the highest-stakes moments of their lives. They administer drugs that can heal and harm in the same infusion bag. They form ongoing therapeutic relationships across months and sometimes years of treatment. They celebrate remissions and they sit with people who are not going to get better.

The emotional labour of oncology nursing is not separable from the clinical work. It is the clinical work. Research consistently shows that oncology nurses report high rates of compassion satisfaction alongside high rates of compassion fatigue, which tells you something important: they care deeply and the caring comes at a cost.

If you have an oncology nurse in your life, or if you are one, Nurses’ Week is a meaningful moment to hold that reality honestly, not to be overwhelmed by it but to acknowledge it clearly.

The work is hard. The work matters. Both of those things are true at the same time, every day, in every oncology unit and infusion suite in this country.

Thank you for being there.

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This article is published annually each May and was originally published in May 2026. It is intended for general informational purposes and does not constitute individual medical or professional advice.