What is Nurses Week?
Nurses Week is celebrated nationally to recognize the hard work of nurses throughout the year. Nurses week ends on Florence Nightingale’s birthday.
Why do we celebrate Nurses Week from May 6-12?
Florence Nightingale is known as the founder of modern nursing and her work led to it being recognized as a career. She was also the first person to link increased patient outcomes with better environments and more sanitary conditions.
The following are gift ideas for the nurses on your staff:
- Catered lunch. This is a great way to show your nurses that you care. Due to our current pandemic, make sure you get boxed lunches for your staff rather than buffet style. You can do a quick google search to find local restaurants that offer this service but one chain you may have near you that offers boxed lunches is Panera Bread.
- Tote Bags. Most nurses are a sucker for a good tote bag. A bag with sections and or pockets are a nice addition to the plain tote. You could even turn the tote into a gift bag and fill it with gum, candy, mints, or cute socks.
- Lunch Bags. Most nurses cannot go out for lunch and need to bring their own so a cute and functional lunch bag could be just the thing that they are looking for!
- Water bottles or coffee mugs. Who doesn’t love a good cup or 20.
- Personalized stethoscope ID tags. It was well known that if you set your stethoscope down, you may never see it again. Personalized stethoscope ID tags would be a great gift that nurses will actually use!
- A pack of colored pens. Nurses could have a pocket of pens and still not have enough. A nice pack of colored pens is sure to put a smile on the face of the nurses you care about.
- Hoodies or jackets with the company logo and/or a cute saying on it. Who doesn’t love a comfy jacket to wear to work that is cute and promotes our workplace? Bonus if it is personalized!
Do you haver a special nurse in your life? The following are more personal gifts for family and friends:
Stethoscope upgrade with personalization
Personalized coffee mug or water bottle
Gift card to their favorite scrub store or amazon
Nurses tote bag, this can be personalized
Take them out to lunch and let them know how much they mean to you
A watch (it needs to have a second hand)
These are just a few ideas to get you started. Etsy and Pinterest have even more amazing ideas for you to choose from.
A note to managers:
I was a manager so I understand quite well how expensive things can get especially the more staff that you have. This is something that you need to plan for the entire year and think quality over quantity. For example: getting a “you’re the balm” lip balm is not a bad idea, it just should not be the only gift your nurses receive. Reach out to those in your community to see if you can get volunteers to help put this together. Do you allow students to complete clinical hours at your facility? See if that nursing school can sponsor one of the days to offset cost.
If you are providing food or some sort of event, make arrangements for all of your staff to get an opportunity to take advantage of it. It feels like a slap in the face when lunch is provided, and your manager is like “figure it out” when you are struggling to get a lunch break. Most of the time I was not able to partake and when I could finally get away, the food was gone. This is another reason why boxed lunch would be a great idea. You could even poll your staff to make sure you get things that match their dietary needs and have the boxes specifically labeled for each nurse. If your nurses work multiple shifts, make sure each shift gets their own and not just leftovers from the previous shift.
Reach out to businesses in your community. For example, you may be able to get free services for simply allowing an outside company into your facility to promote their product or service. (chiropractors, restaurants, food prep or catering service)
Some ideas to celebrate for the entire week:
Day 1-coffee & tea bar. You could give out flavored coffee pods if you have a Keurig machine or bring in bags of flavored coffee to brew. You can get a box of mixed herbal tea flavors as well as green and black tea. Buy individually wrapped biscotti from your local bulk store and this is a great way for the nurses to start their shift!
Day 2- baked goods. Support a small local bakery and order some baked goods for your staff.
Day 3-trinkets. Lanyards, pins, rubber ducks with nurse theme, masks, small lotions, hand sanitizer, or stethoscope charms are a few cute ideas.
Day 4-smoothie bar. Someone on staff or someone local could come in and make real fruit smoothies for everyone. Buying big bags of frozen fruit from a local bulk retailer could make this event cost effective.
Day 5-gift. Tote bag, lunch bag, umbrella, personalized t-shirt or jacket to name a few. You could put your company logo on the gift as well!
Day 6-mini massage. Have someone come to your facility and give 10-minute chair massages to all your nurses. Again, make sure that you make arrangements to ensure they are able to take advantage of this gift.
Day 7-catered lunch. Make sure you arrange for the nurses to be able to take a lunch and enjoy the food that you provided.
I hope this was helpful to you. I wrote it from the nurse’s and manager’s perspective to help give you some ideas and let you know what to avoid. The options are truly endless so get on Pinterest or Google and see what other ideas are floating around out there.