Nurses Week 2021 Schedule | National Nurses United

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Nurses Week 2021 Schedule

Nurses Week 2021 is here! For the next week (May 6-12) we’ll be celebrating and honoring one another as the guardians of care we’ve proven ourselves to be, day after day, shift after shift.

Nurses have always been guardians of care, fighting for our patients and our communities at the bedside, in boardrooms, and throughout the halls of Congress. This week, we celebrate ourselves out loud. Please read on to learn more about what National Nurses United has in store for Nurses Week 2021!

Thursday, May 6 Live Event: State of the Nursing Profession

5 p.m. PT / 8 p.m. ET

Where is nursing headed and how can we defend, protect, and advance our mission of caring? Two veteran nurses will cover a range of subjects including how the health care and hospital industry is exploiting Covid as an excuse to accelerate and make permanent some very disturbing trends in nursing.

The broadcast will be free and open to any who wish to tune in. You can RSVP and set a reminder here.

Friday, May 7 Deadly Shame Episode 1: Care Penalty

Care Penalty is the first in a powerful series of animated shorts which will explore the devaluation of nurses’ care work and resulting inequities, our experiences on the pandemic’s front lines, and ways to change these issues through collective action.

Care Penalty breaks down how employers, lawmakers, and society at large have systematically devalued “care work,” labor that provides life-sustaining care to human beings and society. And, because nursing is historically characterized as “women’s work,” it’s about how nurses pay a “care penalty” that results in unfair wages and unsafe working conditions.

You can watch the videos here, at NNU, and on our social media channels.

Saturday, May 8 Deadly Shame Episode 2: Moral Distress

Episode 2 in the Deadly Shame series, Moral Distress, shows how nurses experience moral distress when we know the right thing to do, but institutional failure makes it impossible for us to do it. The animated short also details how we experience further harm when we are betrayed by our employers and by our elected officials instead of getting the support we so desperately need to do our jobs.

Monday, May 10 Deadly Shame Episode 3: Nurse Power

The final chapter: When we speak out — in spite of intimidation, harassment, and retribution from managers maintaining the status quo — and when we stand together as a union, using our collective strength, we prevail. This is the story of how our unity is our power!

Tuesday, May 11 Take Action!

Right now, hundreds of registered nurses across the country are lobbying on our behalf and on the behalf of our patients and our communities, meeting with U.S. House and Senate members to support bills aimed at improving patient care and health care worker protections.

While our colleagues are fighting for us in the halls of Congress, keep an eye on NNU’s social media feeds for opportunities to take action and support our collective work!

Wednesday, May 12 National Day of Remembrance

Join me and nurses across the country on this last day of Nurses Week for a National Day of Remembrance. We will honor and read the names of the more than 400 nurses who have lost their lives to Covid-19 due to employer and government failures to protect us and provide safe workplaces during this pandemic.

We will come together online and in physical locations, socially distanced, to pay tribute to all of our beloved colleagues. Let us honor their memory and their contributions to our patients, to our communities, and to our lives by remembering them, collectively, and by fighting the dangerous policies and practices that put our colleagues in danger and continue to put ourselves and our patients at risk.