Celebrate a nurse today and every day!

Contemporary Pediatrics extends its gratitude and support to nurses everywhere, especially to pediatric nurses and nurse practitioners, as they work tirelessly and selflessly on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic to care for this nation’s children and their families. We thank you for your sacrifice and dedication.

We can’t hug you during these days of social distancing, but we can honor you and thank you for all that you do, especially at great personal cost.

Here, in the words of our own Editorial Advisory Board member and pediatric nurse practitioner Donna Hallas, PhD, CPNP, PCPNP-BC, is a heartfelt tribute to nurses everywhere:

“How many nurses say to a patient, “Let me take you on a magic carpet ride?” One might ask, why would a nurse say that to a patient? The patient is a child who may be receiving a painful treatment, or anxious about receiving a “shot.” Pediatric nurses, pediatric nurse practitioners (PNPs), advance practice nurse practitioners (APRNs), and school nurses often communicate through imaginative play with children and adolescents to comfort them and help them cope with procedures that, we hope, will return them to health or simply keep them healthy.

It’s National Nurses Week/Month: a moment in time to recognize pediatric nurses and NPs for their commitment to our most precious patients that parents entrust to our expertise and loving compassionate care. As nurses and PNPs, we promise to remain committed to providing state-of-the-science, insightful, evidence-based care to all infants, children, adolescents, and young adults in our practices.

Nurses’ and PNPs’ commitment to our children has been ever so evident during this COVID-19 pandemic. Thank a nurse and PNP during May, which is National Nurses Week and Month, and throughout the year, as the World Health Organization has declared 2020 the international Year of the Nurse and the Midwife!” -Donna Hallas, PhD, CPNP, PCPNP-BC, PMHS, FAANP