194 Years ago today Florence Nightingale was born. Today as well as celebrating her Birthday, we can also acknowledge International Nurses Day.  One way of doing something practical is to register your own opposition to a proposal to raise the cost of the registration fee for the Nursing and Midwifery Council from £100 to 120 per year. As someone who has never been involved with the NHS except as a patient and as someone trying to sell services to the NHS, it came as something of a surprise to me that that most professionals within the NHS have to pay a fee to register with their professional bodies. The Royal College of Nursing is opposing this fee rise and over 100,000 members of the RCN have added their name to a petition opposing the rise and calling on the Government to hold a debate on the issue in the House of Commons. The RCN are arguing that as many Nurses have had their pay frozen or limited due to Government austerity measures, the Government should continue to hold down the cost of registration as they have done so for the last few years.

Why not drop an email or tweet your MP asking them to hold a debate on this matter. They can’t pretend that they are too busy as the Government has just decided to give them a longer break than usual (yes another one) from Westminster as there is not very much business for them to conduct! If you do contact your MP you could also ask them to use their influence to ensure that all Nurses are valued more effectively by the Government.

You could also send out a few tweets or messages on Facebook. The Hashtag for twitter is #IND2014 and there is a Facebook Page which you can Like.

None of these things will make much difference to anyone who is a Nurse and working hard today and thankfully few of us will come into contact with a Nurse today in their professional capacity. However if you do, or if you meet people who are nurses in a social context we could say a particularly clear thank you to them!