Today, Northeast Georgia Health System is joining the American Nurses Association in celebrating National Nurses Week, which is celebrated each year May 6-12.

This year's theme is Nurses: Caring Today for a Healthier Tomorrow, to raise awareness of the value of nursing and help educate the public about the role nurses play in meeting the health care needs of the American people.

Nursing, as a profession is an ever growing and changing field. I have been a nurse for 28 years, this June. My nursing career began during the time when we wore starched white nursing caps and school pins on our white uniforms. Most of us who have worn caps can remember a bald spot on the crown of our heads from trying to keep our caps on with hairpins.

Things have changed a good bit since those days. My first few weeks as a nurse, I was convinced that I had just wasted several years of my life in nursing school and there was no possible way that I could be a nurse. I was overwhelmed with the process of how to juggle all the balls in the air at the same time, realizing that a person's life actually depended upon my actions and knowledge.

But after about three months, things started to click, and thanks to some great mentors, I began to truly love the art of nursing. I've been a nurse now for more than half of my life.

Nurses at the bedside are a patient's lifeline, quite literally. Nurses combine formal education and experience with a cultivated sixth sense to help their patients achieve the best possible level of wellness attainable. Nurses use the data garnered from the bells and whistles of the information age along with the sights, sounds and yes, even smells, of a patient to appropriately assess the condition and response to treatment.

A nurse can spot a gastrointestinal bleeder or renal patient from skin color. A nurse can smell and identify certain types of infections. A nurse can know when a patient doesn't "seem quite right," consult with a physician for orders, confirm a potentially life threatening condition based on a hunch — and save a life.

Nurses are comforters and counselors when the "prognosis is poor," when there is pain. Nurses give you a shoulder and a hug and often a tear to mingle with yours. Nurses provide the encouragement and skill to aid patients regaining mobility to limbs ravaged by a stroke.

Nurses field phone calls from their own family members as the health expert. Conversations that go something like, "I knew you could tell me if I called you ... should I worry? Thank you so much!"

Nurses support, improve and provide health care throughout the health care continuum as educators, soldiers, bedside-care providers, executives, activists and volunteers, just to name a few. Nurses are everywhere.

In honor of the dedication, commitment and tireless effort of the nearly 3.1 million registered nurses nationwide to promote and maintain the health of this nation, the ANA and NGHS are proud to recognize registered nurses everywhere during this particular week for the quality work they provide seven days a week, 365 days a year.

Shannon Garner, RN, BSN, is coordinator, Administrative Nursing Supervisors and IVT, at Northeast Georgia Medical Center in Gainesville.