National Nurses Week 2023: Date, History, Theme, Significance, Facts, Celebration Ideas, Wishes, Quotes, Messages, Images, Captions, slogans, Status! Do you have any idea what collides on the same day with the birthday of Florence Nightingale, well it’s nothing other than the much-needed celebratory week for Nurses of our country. National Nurses Week is the celebratory period of every sacrifice, and contribution nurses make for us and through this celebration, we get the chance to express our gratitude by appreciating and honoring them. The celebration of the week begins on the 6th of May and ends on the 12th of May; the end date collides with the birthday of the famous nurse Florence Nightingale.
Nurses around the country get many discounts and freebie offers which are done throughout the week as a way of paying homage to them. Not to mention, the kind of ordeal they are facing during the pandemic crisis we are all facing, we must show our appreciation, gratitude, and honor towards them, for they are also the frontline soldiers who are battling through this coronavirus pandemic. So, let’s dive into some more aspects of them.
When is Happy National Nurses Week 2023 USA?
The National Nurses Week 2023 Celebrations start on Saturday, May 6, and end on Friday, May 12, and the National Nurses Day 2023 celebration date is Saturday, May 6 in the United States (US).
National Nurses Week 2023 Theme:
The theme of National Nurses Week 2023 is …
“You Make a Difference.”
2020: “A Voice to Lead – Nursing the World to Health.”

National Nurses Week 2023
This year 2023, National Nurses Week is celebrated from May 6 – May 12. According to the American Nurses Association, the theme is “You Make a Difference.” The week is just a part of the larger National Nurses Month, which is celebrated from May 1 to the 31st.
Per the ANA, there are 4 weekly focus areas they are highlighting this year.
- May 1-7: Self-Care
- May 8-14: Recognition
- May 15 -20: Professional Development
- May 22-31: Community Engagement
History of National Nurses Week:
Nursing is an honorable profession, who fights by doctors possessing a wide range of skills. In modern times, to become a nurse one has to take four years of study, an intense level of dedication coupled with focus. Nurses are the crucial bridge that helps doctors and patients to connect in the right manner in many frontiers.
The emergence of modern nursing is a credit to Florence Nightingale, who through her valiant efforts during and after the Crimean War paved the way for professional nursing. She can be credited as the Mother of Modern Day Nursing Practice. She was the one to introduce facets like hygiene protocol which helped in reducing the humongous rate of infections and deaths in the battlefield. Since she used to make her visiting rounds of the patients in the night, she got the rightly deserved title of “The Lady with the Lamp.”
In 1974, the International Council of Nurses declared May 12 as International Nurses Day to recognize the valiant and versatile efforts of nurses and to draw attention to their working conditions. A few years later, the celebration got an extension of one week and thus the official birth of National Nurses Week began in 1994. The week-long celebration, funded and supported by the American Nurses Association, illustrates the significant contributions nurses render to the community.
In the UK, a ceremonial service is held during the week in Westminster Abbey where nurses pass along lamps to each other which symbolizes the passing of knowledge. China has its nurses reinforce their commitment to the pledge issued in honor of Florence Nightingale. Australia awards prizes like Nurse of the year and holds various other ceremonies weeklong for honoring their nurses across the country.
How to Celebrate National Nurses Week 2023?
Send Gifts of Appreciation
Express gratitude to nurses for their tireless dedication with thoughtful gifts or surprise meals, complementing their professional attire with stylish hunter green scrubs.
Nurses serve our various needs as patients with little to no breaks if needed and they deserve to get treats or gifts from us. So, you can find some appropriate gifts or take them out to a surprise meal to show your gratitude.
Write Thank You Notes
Show the nurses how much their effort made your life better and how grateful you are to them by writing a heartfelt genuine message to them. This is a sure way to make their heart swell in pride and contentment.
Attend Health Fairs for Nurses and Create Fundraising Events
In the US, various health fairs are held across hospitals to show appreciation as well as fundraising events get created to support the nurses. Join them to show your appreciation and make their life better by participating in fundraising.
Why did we Love to Celebrate National Nurses Week?
Nurses provide multiple kinds of services often with a smile despite being stressed out from non-stop work. They help the doctors to conduct the medical procedure, preaches about the right of the patients, offer lessons regarding healthcare, monitors the medication of patients and so much more. We can make them feel valuable, seen, and appreciated by offering our gratitude in ways that deem fit to us throughout the celebratory week, which they so much deserve. With the long list of services they provide to us most of the time with no thanks or rest whatsoever, it is the high time to show our appreciation, praise, and gratitude for all they do and all they are.
In the course of history, many times nurses have crossed mountains to bring back their patients from the cold hand of the ripper. Their contribution to healing humanity during the crisis period such as- war, pandemics, poverty, etc cannot go unnoticed. To this very day, they have been performing their boundless service strongly as they have always done for the wounded, dying patients around the globe. National Nurses Week is the perfect vessel through which we can show our feats of appreciation for those individuals who rightly deserve to be termed as the “Heart of Healthcare”.
Best 50 Quotes for National Nurses Week 2023 Celebrations
1. “Constant attention by a good nurse may be just as important as a major operation by a surgeon.” — Dag Hammarskjold
2. “America’s nurses are the beating heart of our medical system.” — Barack Obama

3. “The doctors may be mapping out the war games, but it is the nurses who make the conflict bearable. — Jodi Picoult
4. “When a person decides to become a nurse, they make the most important decision of their lives. They choose to dedicate themselves to the care of others.” — Margaret Harvey
5. “Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen every day.” – H. Jackson Brown Jr.
6. “As a nurse, we have the opportunity to heal the heart, mind, soul and body of our patients, their families and ourselves. They may forget your name, but they will never forget how you made them feel.” — Maya Angelou
7. “To do what nobody else will do, a way that nobody else can do, in spite of all we go through; that is to be a nurse.” — Rawsi Williams
8. “Where there is love there is life.” — Mahatma Gandhi
9.“And what nursing has to do in either case is to put the patient in the best condition for nature to act upon him.” — Florence Nightingale
10. “Knowing is better than wondering, waking is better than sleeping, and even the biggest failure, even the worse, beats the hell out of never trying.” — Grey’s Anatomy
11. “The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” — Steve Jobs
12. “Caring about others, running the risk of feeling, and leaving an impact on people, brings happiness.” ― Harold Kushner
13. “Nurses dispense comfort, compassion, and caring without even a prescription.” — Val Saintsbury
14. “We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.” — Winston Churchill
15. “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.” Mahatma Gandhi
16. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed people can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead
17. “From caring comes courage.” — Lao Tzu
18. “A nurse is compassion in scrubs.” – Lexie Saige
19. “Where the needs of the world and your talents cross, there lies your vocation” — Aristotle
20. “Kindness can transform someone’s dark moment with a blaze of light. You’ll never know how much your caring matters. Make a difference for another today.” ― Amy Leigh Mercree
21. “The trained nurse has become one of the great blessings of humanity, taking a place beside the physician and the priest.” — William Osler
22. “Nursing encompasses an art, a humanistic orientation, a feeling for the value of the individual, and an intuitive sense of ethics, and of the appropriateness of action taken.” — Myrtle Aydelotte
23. “For the sick, it is important to have the best.” — Florence Nightingale
24. “No matter how difficult the days may get, don’t forget the reason you became a nurse.” — Unknown
25. “Nurses are the heart of healthcare.” — Donna Wilk Cardillo
26. “There are only four kinds of people in the world. Those who have been caregivers. Those who are currently caregivers. Those who will be caregivers, and those who will need a caregiver.” — Rosalyn Carter
27. “Some days there won’t be a song in your heart. Sing anyway.” — Emory Austin
28. “No act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.” — Aesop
29. “Our fingerprints don’t fade from the lives we touch.” – Judy Blume
30. “A smile is the light in your window that tells others that there is a caring, sharing person inside.” ― Denis Waitley
31. “Have a heart that never hardens, a temper that never tires, a touch that never hurts.” — Charles Dickens
32. “It is not enough to be compassionate— you must act.” — The Dalai Lama
33. “Kind words can be short and easy to speak but their echoes are truly endless.” — Mother Teresa
34. “We won’t always know whose lives we touched and made better for our having cared, because actions can sometimes have unforeseen ramifications. What’s important is that you do care and you act.” — Charlotte Lunsford
35. Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.” — Theodore Roosevelt
36. “Worrying does not empty tomorrow of its troubles; it empties today of its strengths.” — Corrie Ten Boom
37. “Save one life and you’re a hero, save one hundred lives and you’re a nurse.” — Unknown
38. “Remember: Nurses are like icebergs. At any one time, you are only seeing what they are actually doing.” — Ian Miller
39. “As nurses we know suffering. We are full aware of how precious each moment of life is.” – Patricia Bratianu
40. “Every time you smile at someone, it is an action of love, a gift to that person, a beautiful thing.” — Mother Teresa
41. “The character of a nurse is just as important as the knowledge she possesses.” — Carolyn Jarvis
42. “A nurse will always give us hope—an angel with a stethoscope.” — Terri Guillemets
43. “What you do makes a difference. And you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” – Jane Goodall
44. “Caring is the essence of nursing.” — Jean Watson
45. “Being a nurse means to hold all your own tears and start drawing smiles on people’s faces.” — Dana Basem
46. “Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” — William James
47. “Our job as nurses is to cushion the sorrow and celebrate the joy, every day, while we are ‘just doing our jobs.’” — Christine Belle
48. “Care is a state in which something does matter; it is the source of human tenderness.” ― Rollo May
49.“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.” — Leo Buscaglia
50. “Whether a person is male or female, a nurse is a nurse.” — Gary Veale
Let’s express everything within our caliber to pay tribute to these frontline soldiers who perform some of the most grueling, nerve-bending, and oftentimes heartbreaking tasks for us and thus be able to keep the cycle of a ripple effect to continue its rampage in making the world a sustainably better place to live.
General Disclaimer: Every year, the United States celebrated over 1,600 National Days. So, Don’t miss a single Celebration Day. Chill, Enjoy, and Celebrate Every Day with National Day Time!