The theme for this year’s National Nurses Week may be innovation, but nursing has many traditions that we tend to hold onto very tightly. These traditions help us connect to the nurses who went before us and defined and established our profession.
One such tradition is the pinning ceremony that occurs worldwide this time of the year. It commonly occurs before the graduation exercise and is usually a separate ceremony just for the nursing school.
The nursing pin from the Division of Nursing at California State University, Sacramento. Awarded 2008.
Nursing takes its tradition of a pin from a thousand years ago when crusaders wore the Maltese cross to identify them as Christians, and when brothers in arms took on nursing responsibilities to care for wounded soldiers on the battlefield. The first male nurse! (Click here to read more about the role of men in the world of nursing). The current nursing pin clearly became ours about 100 years ago when schools of nursing were housed in hospitals. Each hospital had a “badge” which was the hospital’s version of a pin. It told patients and family where the nurse did her (only women during this time frame!) training. These pins were worn proudly.
This tradition is still going strong. Each nursing school has a pin with its “coat of arms” if you will. Graduates wear pins to honor those who came before and to celebrate their joining the ranks of new nurses. In the ceremony a chosen faculty member pins the students to symbolize the progression from the student being in the care of the school to entering the profession of nursing. Some ceremonies allow each student to choose the person who was most influential in nursing school to pin her in the ceremony. The new nurse carries that piece of the mentor with her into nursing practice.
Though the pins may have changed, and the ceremony varies from school to school, the meaning of progression and welcoming of new nurses into our profession is still the same. I get goose bumps when I attend the pinning ceremony. Those of us who are in nursing welcome those of you who are coming in, and we hope we never forget the foundation we stand on.
