Meeting of the Parliament 10 May 2017
It is a great pleasure for me to speak in this members’ business debate led by Emma Harper, not least because my own mother was a nurse. I well remember her telling the story of how she became a nurse. At the time, she worked as a young secretary in an architects’ firm in Ayr, and one day the senior partner came dancing into her office singing about her becoming another Florence Nightingale. For some reason, he, rather than she, had received the letter confirming her acceptance for nurses training in Glasgow. It was not too many years later that my Aunt Esther followed her big sister Edith into the nursing profession, making it a Murray sister double act.
International nurses day—or week in the United States of America and Canada—gives us all the opportunity to reflect on the outstanding work that is done by nurses across the world and on the particular invaluable abilities that are required of those in the nursing profession. A selfless, caring, patient, understanding and dedicated attitude and approach: those are just some of the qualities that are associated with these important workers in our health services. They are people whom we depend upon to help us through some of the toughest times that we experience in life or who have been there for some of those closest to us in the most difficult of times.
I know that many of us in the chamber have pointed already to examples of nurses in their lives or others’ lives who have taken up these roles, and that is exactly what this day encourages us to do. I know that I and my brothers and sisters all benefited from our mother’s skills and training as a nurse, and I know that countless others did as well, including in my mother’s later life when she worked as a volunteer nurse at children’s summer camps.
On a day such as this, it is important to remember the debt that we owe to all our healthcare professionals, who work to help save life and limb; in particular, it is important to remember our nurses on this day.
When the Murray sisters worked in the Gorbals in Glasgow in the late 1950s, they could walk alone through the streets in their nurses’ uniform, night or day, without any fear of harm. Sadly, it is not uncommon nowadays to hear stories of a lack of respect being shown not just to nurses in our hospitals, but to others in essential emergency services.
It is important that we re-emphasise the need for respect for our nurses and the work that they do. Nurses are essential in our society and deserve all our respect. I hope that by celebrating this day, including in the Scottish Parliament, we can reinforce that message.