Scottish Care celebrated International Nurses Week 2021, from Thursday 6 May, this celebration week ran until Wednesday 12 May, which is International Nurses Day. 

This year’s theme is innovation and throughout this week, Scottish Care collated and shared stories from care homes and individuals.

It was important for us to share these positive stories to recognise all the work nurses and care home staff do, especially during these difficult times.

On Wednesday 12 May, to mark International Nurses Day, we encouraged care homes to take part in a “Take a T break” – with the T standing for thank you. This is a chance to say thank you to our dedicated nurses, carers and teams for all the work they do and for stepping up to the challenges of Covid-19.

Stories were shared on Twitter with the hashtag #carenursescot. You can catch up on everything that we shared below.

We have also created a Thank You card for Scottish Care members to download and print off for staff.

To start off this week,  Jacqui Neil, our Transforming Workforce Lead for Nursing wrote a short introductory blog.

A year has passed since we had our 2020 week of celebration for International Nurses’ Week. This year, Thursday 6th May starts the beginning of our week of celebration and we look forward to everyone joining in. We recognise that the last year has been challenging to say the least but as our care homes start to open again it is important to keep and develop the innovations in practice that have made the most impact to those who reside within our care homes.

The theme this year is innovation and to celebrate this we will feature a daily example from a variety of care homes that have implemented changes to adapt to the restrictions of lockdown over the last year.

On the 12^th we will conclude with our take a T break which represents our Thank you break where we ask all care homes to get behind thanking their staff for all that they have done and continue to do. Please use hashtag #carenursescot over social media to promote this week, especially on the 12^{th of} May.

Colleagues and I at Scottish Care would like to extend our own personal thank you to every member of staff in recognition for continuing to go above and beyond.