Our Chief Executive, Adele Doherty, has written a guest blog to thank our nurses for their kindness and compassion as they help people across Oldham to die with dignity.
CEO guest blog: International Nurses Day
As a trained nurse with decades of experience, Dr Kershaw’s Hospice’s CEO, Adele Doherty, knows how hard nurses work to provide high-quality care for people in the local community. For International Nurses Day, she wanted to highlight their incredible contributions.
Continuing the legacy of Florence Nightingale
On International Nurses Day (12 May), we celebrate the remarkable contribution of nurses everywhere, and especially the extraordinary nurses here within our hospice family.
International Nurses Day is marked on the birthday of Florence Nightingale, whose legacy continues to shape nursing across the world. Florence Nightingale was known as ‘The Lady with the Lamp’ but her legacy was far greater than the lamp she carried. She transformed nursing into a profession grounded in compassion, evidence, dignity, and patient-centred care.
More than 160 years later, those same values live on at Dr Kershaw’s Hospice and within each of you, and is the heart of hospice nursing.
For me personally as a nurse, the one thing that resonates is what Florence Nightingale said regarding these values: “I attribute my success to this: I never gave or took any excuse.” That quiet determination still echoes through the nursing profession today, and I see it in all of you.
So, let’s pause to celebrate a group of people whose work cannot truly be measured in tasks completed, charts updated, or miles walked around the hospice or in our community. Hospice nursing lives in the quiet spaces between medicine and humanity. It is the steady hand at 3am. The calm voice in moments of fear. The dignity you protect when people are at their most vulnerable.
Hospice nurses are extraordinary
Hospice care asks something extraordinary of our nurses. You do not simply care for patients. You care for families, partners, children, friends, and sometimes entire communities navigating grief, uncertainty, and love. You stand beside people at some of the hardest moments life can bring, and somehow you continue to bring warmth, compassion, humour, reassurance, and strength.
That takes immense skill. But more than that, it takes heart. This is reflected in our core value, ‘You are at the heart of everything we do!’.
What you do everyday matters beyond words. Families may not remember every clinical detail, but they will always remember the nurse who made time to listen. The nurse who noticed when someone was frightened before they said a word. The nurse who made a room feel less heavy. The nurse who helped someone feel seen, safe, and cared for.
Hospice care is built on people
Hospice nurses are a rare blend of professionalism and humanity. You are advocates, educators, problem-solvers, counsellors, and companions. You carry enormous responsibility while still managing to offer kindness in the smallest moments. Sometimes it is a blanket adjusted gently. A cup of tea made at the right time. A conversation in a corridor.
I also want to acknowledge that this work is not always easy. It asks a great deal emotionally and physically. Yet day after day, you continue to show up with courage and compassion. That commitment deserves not only gratitude today, but support and appreciation every day.
To all our nurses: thank you for your expertise, your resilience, your patience, and your humanity. Thank you for the comfort you bring, the dignity you protect, and the difference you make in lives that will never forget you.
International Nurses Day is a celebration, but it is also a reminder. A reminder that healthcare is not built only on treatments and technology. It is built on people. And Dr Kershaw’s Hospice is stronger, kinder, and more compassionate because of you.
I am so deeply proud of you all.
Read about the experiences of our patients and their families.