Each year Mater staff join midwives and nurses worldwide to celebrate International Day of the Midwife, 5 May and International Nurses Day, 12 May.
International Nurses Day is held on the birth date of Florence Nightingale, who made many reforms to nursing and health care and significantly reduced the death rate amongst soldiers during the Crimean War. Her reforms have influenced modern health care and her writings continue to be a resource for nurses, health managers and planners today.
Each year on 12 May, a service is held at Westminster Abbey in London to commemorate her life and celebrate the nursing profession. During the service a lamp is taken from the Nurses’ Chapel in the Abbey and handed from one nurse to the next. The last person to receive the lamp is the Dean who then places the symbolic lamp onto the High Altar.
The ceremony represents the passing of knowledge from one nurse to another, like Florence Nightingale did when she established her Schools of Nursing.
International Day of the Midwife—launched in May 1991—is an occasion for midwives to think about the many others in the profession, to make new contacts within and outside midwifery, and to widen the knowledge of what midwives do for the world.
In the years leading up to 2015, the theme for International Day of the Midwife is The World Needs Midwives Today More Than Ever. This year’s theme for International Nurses Day was Delivering Quality, Serving Communities: Nurses Leading Chronic Care.