Celebrating Nurses on International Nurses Day

As an amendment to motion S6M-04202 in the name of Jackie Baillie (Celebrating Nurses on International Nurses Day), after "all that they do;" insert "considers that, in addition to Florence Nightingale, Scotland takes inspiration from Louisa Jordan, a Scottish nurse who had a prominent role during the First World War; understands that people come to nursing from all walks and stages of life and from many different cultural and ethnic backgrounds, and that nurses have a vital role in helping patients understand information about their diagnoses, care and treatment and in responding to patients' physical, clinical and emotional needs; acknowledges the breadth of areas that nursing encompasses, including adult, children, learning disability, mental health, perioperative, resuscitation, diabetes, cardiac and many others; understands that nurses make up the largest single profession in the NHS and are at the heart of the health service and care received by people across the age continuum; notes that they care for their patients in a variety of settings, not just in hospital wards, but in GP practices, homes and care homes, as well as in schools and communities across the country; considers that nurses in Scotland are highly skilled professionals, with some of the most advanced clinical skills of nurses anywhere in the world; welcomes the creation of the International Coalition of Respiratory Nurses (ICRN), initiated by Andreja Šajnic, a respiratory nurse from Croatia, with political support from Zeljana Zovko MEP, which aims to bring together nurses from across the world to collaborate and promote respiratory education among the profession, and also serves as another example of how nurses are advancing the profession; recognises what it sees as the steps that the Scottish Government is taking to support the profession and recruitment to it, including through a £10,000 bursary for student nurses; further recognises the Scottish Government’s Nursing Vision to 2030, which it considers aims to prepare a nursing workforce that will be ready and able to meet people's needs up to 2030 through, for example, ensuring that nursing is better understood by the public by enhancing knowledge of how nursing can benefit them, increasing nursing's appeal as a career option, retaining a focus on supporting people experiencing periods of acute ill health in hospital and in the community, but increasingly also supporting prevention, addressing wider issues around promoting health and wellbeing, tackling inequalities and supporting parity of esteem between physical and mental healthcare, and through ensuring that nurses continue to receive the best and fairest pay deal, with nurses in Scotland being, on average, it understands, the highest paid in the UK; notes the calls to urgently address the reported high levels of nursing vacancies across Scotland, but welcomes what it sees as the continued work of the Scottish Government to address nursing staff vacancies; further notes the calls on the Scottish Government to continue to engage with the profession as this work progresses through, and out of, the current COVID-19 pandemic; thanks nursing staff again for everything that they do for the people of Scotland;".