Nurses Week: Celebrating The Power of Nursing Friendships

Nurses Week is an annual event celebrated across the U.S. The historic efforts to create and achieve national nurse recognition started in the 1950s. Today, Nurses Week is dedicated to recognizing nurses’ important role in healthcare. From May 6-12, hospitals, healthcare organizations, and communities join to honor all nurses and spotlight those who continue to make lasting contributions to the profession.

For Nurses Week 2023, NurseJournal is celebrating friendships in nursing. We recognize nursing is not just a career. It’s a profession where you make lifelong friendships — bonds that provide a support system in an emotionally and physically demanding field.

We know nursing friendships go beyond the bedside and help keep you going. Despite current events like the nursing shortage and nursing strikes, friendships may be one reason to keep you in the profession.

NurseJournal’s Nurses Week 2023 video series is titled “The Breakroom.” It features three groups of nursing friends who discuss friendships and the role they played in their nursing careers.

The break room (out of earshot from patients, their families, and administration) is a sacred space for nurses. It’s here where nurses come to rest, relax, and recharge. It’s a place where conversations flow and friendships flourish. The break room is where you celebrate life events like birthdays, baby showers, and even engagement parties. It’s a place to cry and talk about challenges and triumphs.

Friendships are what make nursing bonds unbreakable. In this five-episode series, you’ll hear from three groups of nursing friends who have been through and seen it all.

McLean-Walcott, Valerie Yearwood, and Mary Lawson Valerie are three nursing friends who have known each other for over 50 years. Another group — Katie Warcola, Pattyann Hansen, and Ashleigh Pileggi — includes an aunt and niece nursing pair and her mentee/friend. Finally, Jess Barbosa, Melanie Perez, and Eva Develleres are nursing friends who have grown together during their early nursing careers.

Nursing is stressful but rewarding. Without friendships in the field, nurses may feel isolated and unsupported. With the recent COVID-19 pandemic, nursing friendships have gotten even stronger. Nurses report leaning on their coworkers during the pandemic, knowing they couldn’t have survived without each other.

But nursing friendships go deeper than the pandemic. Nurses have shared experiences. This fellowship allows them to share challenges they face in and outside work without a backstory.

Nurse friendships start as early as nursing school, and some are multigenerational — daughters and sons, nieces and nephews following in their family members’ footsteps.

NurseJournal is highlighting these friendships because, let’s be honest, sometimes it’s difficult for our non-nursing friends and our partners to relate! Nursing friendships create a support system, inspire professional growth, and foster mentorship.