International Nurses Day
Next: May 12, 2027
Thank the nurse who looked after you.
The story
Where it comes from
International Nurses Day falls on 12 May, the birthday of Florence Nightingale, born in 1820 and remembered as the founder of modern nursing. During the Crimean War she took a party of 38 nurses to the military hospitals at Scutari, and her night rounds earned her the name 'Lady with the Lamp'. In 1860 she opened the Nightingale Training School at St Thomas' Hospital in London, the first professional training school for nurses. The International Council of Nurses has celebrated a nurses' day since 1965, and in January 1974 it fixed the day on her birthday.
How it's celebrated
Each year the International Council of Nurses publishes a report and a set of resources that nurses' associations around the world use to mark the day. In the United States, National Nurses Week runs from 6 to 12 May and ends on Nightingale's birthday. For the rest of us it is a good day to thank a nurse who once looked after you, or after someone you love.
Did you know
- Nightingale was the first woman elected to the Royal Statistical Society, and she used charts to show that more soldiers in the Crimean War died of disease than of their wounds.
- In 1907 she became the first woman to receive the Order of Merit.
- Singapore keeps its own Nurses' Day on 1 August, the date in 1885 when French nuns of the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus began nursing at the General Hospital.
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