St Helena Hospice is joining in the celebration of nurses on International Nurses Day is a worldwide celebration of nurses and happens every year on the 12th May, the anniversary of Florence Nightingale’s birth.

This year the focus is ‘our nurses, our future’, looking at what’s needed from nursing to address the global health challenges and improve health for all.

St Helena Hospice has around 150 staff in patient facing roles and about 70 of those are registered nurses in a range of nursing roles including at the Hospice building in Colchester; across the whole of north east Essex caring for people in their own homes; and in its SinglePoint 24/7 crisis response telephone line.

Lisa Parrish, director of care at St Helena Hospice, said:

“International Nurses Day is important to me personally as a nurse; I’ve been a nurse for over 30 years, it’s part of my identity. At St Helena we’re celebrating our nursing workforce and those who work alongside them in all the other roles that we have in the organisation.

“There is a diversity of roles that nursing can offer. Clearly, we need a nursing workforce for the future and it is such a diverse profession; there are opportunities to go into very clinically focused roles, research roles, teaching roles, leadership and management roles, and more.

“It’s an opportunity to recognise and celebrate the really valuable work that our nursing team does every single day of the year to support the local population here in north east Essex.”

Donating to St Helena’s spring appeal at www.sthelena.org.uk/spring will help patients and their loved ones to receive compassionate nursing care at the end of their life.