TOMORROW is International Nurses Day. The theme for this May 12 is “Nurses: A Force for Change – A vital resource for health”.

A celebration that is reported to have started in 1965, the International Council of Nurses recognises the day on the anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth, the woman largely regarded as the founder of modern nursing.

How has a nurse impacted your life?

The commitment, professionalism and hard work of nurses is marked worldwide will be marked worldwide on Monday but before, the Sunday Observer sought to find out just how nurses have impacted a couple lives. This is what Sasha Innis and Rockell Douglas had to say.

Rockell Douglas, 21

I was in the hospital for a sum of three months and came across nurses who were young and old — some more experienced and burnt out, while others were young and eager. Nurse Sutherland at the University of the West Indies stands out in my mind — a bubbly, old thing who is very nice and reminded me of my mother. She was always attentive and every morning she would come into the room and open the curtains with a bright greeting of ‘good morning’. For about two minutes, she made everybody feel loved and made us almost forget we were at the hospital and not in our own rooms at home.

It was the first day of my exams at the University of Technology and I was feeling very bad because I was missing out. She called UTech and asked, ‘I have a patient here that needs to do her exams, can you send somebody who is an invigilator?’

I cancelled the exam at the end of the day because I had not got a chance to prepare, but for her to have contacted UTech and to get an invigilator and exam papers for me, that showed she cared.

Sasha Innis, 25

I was in the hospital in July 2005 for 11 days.

I can’t pin it down to one single experience, it was the treatment in its entirety. They were excellent caregivers. I was unable to walk, move around or support my own weight because I’d done spinal surgery, so everything depended on them: feeding, cleaning, simple things like turning over, all of that.

They were always patient, attentive, and pleasant, very pleasant.

And what I liked most about them was that they made my mother feel comfortable. Like having them around alleviated her worries because we both felt like they really cared. I think that helped to make her feel at ease with the whole situation. I felt the same way, so much so that when I left the hospital I actually had a period where I wanted to go back.

I was more comfortable there knowing that there was always someone around who would tend to me, as weird as it sounds.