Hansard

Sadly, I cannot make it three nurses in a row. I feel as though I am letting the side down.

I thank Emma Harper for moving the motion. I, too, want to put on record my admiration and respect for our nursing staff across Scotland.

This chamber is definitely a richer place when MSPs from a wide variety of professional backgrounds are able to bring their invaluable experience to debates such as this evening’s. I pay tribute to Emma Harper and Clare Haughey for their speeches, which were informed by their day-to-day experience.

Nurses are, by and large, the public face of the NHS in our hospitals and community health centres. They do an incredibly tough job, often on unsociable working hours, and, as we heard earlier this afternoon, they are taking on an increasing workload as demand grows. They are the bastions of our health service, and we must always remember that.

As Emma Harper intimated in her motion, international nurses day was set up to coincide with the birth of Florence Nightingale, one of the most famous nurses in the world, who is largely credited as the founder of modern nursing. As has been said, her persona as “the lady with the lamp” made her a beacon of hope to the soldiers who were injured during the Crimean war.

However, it is for her significant contribution to modern nursing that she is and should be best remembered. Her book “Notes on Nursing” was published in 1859, yet many if not all of its contents continue to have stark relevance today. Today, we talk about hospital cleanliness. Florence Nightingale tackled that. Today, we talk about the importance of diet. Florence Nightingale tackled that. Today, we talk about making sure that our homes are clean, ventilated and warm. Florence Nightingale tackled that. As Churchill said,

“Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

That springs to mind when we talk about Nightingale’s observations on healthcare.

One nurse whom the motion does not mention is Elsie Inglis. I want to mention her briefly as we debate the motion because, as well as being a famous Scottish nurse, she was an incredible person. She founded the Scottish women’s hospitals unit, which provided nursing staff and a variety of auxiliary personnel to battlefields across the European continent, despite the incredible barriers that women faced at the time. Her pioneering work saved thousands of lives, and she and many others who go unrecognised in history should always be remembered.

I have mentioned some famous and renowned female nurses because it is important to understand and remember that nursing is a predominantly female profession. The most recent statistics show that almost 90 per cent of nursing staff in Scotland are female—just under 60,000 women are employed as such, compared with 7,000 men. That is not to say that we do not value our male nurses as much; of course we do.

Nursing is also a profession with vacancies. I make that point not to score a political point but to raise awareness of the fact that all of us need to do more to encourage more men and women to take up nursing as a profession. We need to promote the sector to young people who are about to leave school or university and are unsure of what path to take. Nursing can be extremely rewarding, and it provides people with an immeasurable number of important skills. As we continue with the shift in care from acute to community-led services, the importance of community nursing will grow significantly.

Nurses are extremely important in our NHS, and we must always recognise that.