Online video celebrates nurses
The current COVID-19 pandemic has put nurses and the work they do at the centre of an intense spotlight.
For that reason, this week’s National Nursing Week and Year of the Nurse celebrations have taken on an added significance with thousands of nurses on the front line playing a critical role in providing daily care and helping to save lives during the coronavirus crisis.
“2020 was selected as the Year of the Nurse because it is the 200th birthday of Florence Nightingale,” said Doris Grinspun, CEO of the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario. “If she is looking down now, she would be so proud of every single nurse. You have turned the year of the nurse into the year of the patient.
“During this tremendous pandemic you have given of yourself — including the risk of your own life — to the families and their loved ones. We thank you.”
Windsor Regional Hospital, Hotel-dieu Grace Healthcare and Erie Shores Healthcare released a touching online tribute on Monday to launch nursing week with a couple dozen Windsor and Essex County political, business, union and community leaders expressing gratitude toward area nurses.
Their words in the video honoured local nurses — not only for playing such a critical role professionally in recent months, but for doing this work while putting their own health and safety at risk.
“Now in these times when you are putting your life on the line and your own families at risk, you are my heroes,” Leamington Mayor Hilda Macdonald said during the four-minute tribute video. “I couldn’t do what you do.”
Unifor Local 444 president Dave Cassidy offered similar sentiment.
“During this pandemic we needed you and you rose to the challenge — ready and willing to fight for all of us,” Cassidy said. “And that’s what heroes do.”
Local MPP Taras Natyshak (Ndp—essex) said there is “no adequate way” to fully express thanks for what nurses are doing presently on the job during the virus crisis.
“You are putting yourself at risk, your family’s health at risk,” he said. “You are protecting the most vulnerable among us.”
As part of the celebration kickoff, a caravan of over a dozen Windsor police cruisers and vehicles paid tribute to nurses on Monday by parading past both the Met and Ouellette campuses of Windsor Regional Hospital.
There are a wide variety of activities planned this week to honour nurses locally and provincially. Visit online at rnao.ca or wrh.on.ca for more information.