The Game Changer

A work by the celebrated mystery artist Banksy hangs in a hospital in southern England. Donated by the artist just in time for Nurses Week 2020, it pays tribute to nurses - showing a boy playing with a female nurse action figure while comic book superheroes Batman and Spiderman are cast aside.

The work is called “Game Changer” and, as you’d expect, it works on multiple levels. The title is worth?some reflection as we celebrate and honor nurses and their profession this Nurses Week 2022. ?

COVID-19 delivered a game changer, a global pandemic that raised the healthcare stakes dramatically and resulted in countless casualties, many of them nurses. ??

The courage and constancy of nurses around the world proved to be another game changer. Imagine coping in a pandemic without them. What would that have looked like?

But we believe the more profound game changer offered freely by nurses every day - is hope. In the best moments and in the worst, whether we’re coworkers, patients or family members of patients, we count on nurses.

At NorthShore – Edward-Elmhurst Health, we want to express our deepest respect and appreciation for our hard-working, self-sacrificing nursing team for the care, compassion and kindness they bring to the job every day.

We marvel at your professionalism, dedication and resilience.

We watch as you care for others, often before yourselves and your families.

But most of all, we are brightened by the hope you bring into our medical settings and bestow upon our patients, their families and their loved ones. That you can shrug off the chaos of the day, as you do, and tend to those under your care with such clear-eyed expertise and fortitude endlessly inspires. ???

As it turns out, the most fundamental game changer nurses give us is nothing new—and nothing that’s specifically rooted in the COVID era—it’s how, minute by minute of every day, nurses bring light into dark spaces, and hope where it’s needed.

To our NorthShore – Edward-Elmhurst Health nurses and to nurses everywhere: thank you.??