Published September 17, 2026 · dates verified with the ANA
The May observance for nurses, with the dates settled and the history straight: why it runs May 6 to 12 no matter what the calendar does, the year it was held in October, and how a week turned into a month.
National Nurses Week 2027 runs May 6-12, 2027, Thursday through Wednesday. The dates do not float. The American Nurses Association fixed the week at May 6 through May 12 for 1994 and every year after, so the only thing that changes from one year to the next is which weekdays those dates land on.
May 6 is National Nurses Day, first proclaimed for 1982 and, since 1996, also National RN Recognition Day. May 12 is International Nurses Day, marked by the International Council of Nurses because it is the birthday of Florence Nightingale, born in 1820. The week runs from one date to the other. That is why it is exactly seven days long, and why it starts and ends on whatever weekdays the calendar hands it.
May 8 is National Student Nurses Day, designated by the ANA in 1997; in 2027 it is a Saturday, and the students will cope. The Wednesday of the week is National School Nurse Day, set by the National Association of School Nurses, and in 2027 that Wednesday is May 12, so school nurses share their day with International Nurses Day. Since 2020 the ANA has also treated all of May as National Nurses Month, with the week as its centerpiece.
A calendar that lists Nurses Week as "the week of May 12" or "the second week of May" is describing Canada's National Nursing Week, not the US observance. More on that below.
Same week, several labels, plus two single days and a whole month that get mixed in with it. Sorting them out:
The official name, used by the American Nurses Association since it expanded the recognition to a week in 1990. May 6-12, every year.
What people actually say and type, along with RN Appreciation Week and nurses appreciation week. All point at the same seven days in May.
May 6, the first day of the week. A US observance the ANA promoted for 1982 and now also calls National RN Recognition Day.
May 12, the last day of the week and Florence Nightingale's birthday. Run by the International Council of Nurses and observed worldwide, so not a US invention and not the ANA's to move.
All of May, since the ANA extended the recognition in 2020. The week did not go anywhere; it now sits inside a month of programming.
A different country and a different rule: the Canadian Nurses Association holds it during the week containing May 12, which makes it May 10-16 in 2027.
The association came first, by a wide margin. The American Nurses Association was founded in 1896 as the Nurses Associated Alumnae of the United States and Canada and took its current name in 1911. It marked its 130th year in 2026, which puts the profession's national organization roughly six decades ahead of the profession's national week.
The week itself started as a memo. In 1953 Dorothy Sutherland of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare proposed that President Eisenhower proclaim a "Nurse Day." He did not. What happened instead was the first National Nurse Week, observed October 11-16, 1954, to mark the 100th anniversary of Florence Nightingale's mission to the Crimea. So the original Nurses Week was an autumn event, and it took two decades to become an annual one.
The 1970s and 1980s supplied the presidential paperwork. A 1972 House resolution asked for a "National Registered Nurse Day." In February 1974 the White House designated a National Nurse Week and President Nixon issued a proclamation. In 1978 the governor of New Jersey declared May 6 "Nurses Day," and in 1982 President Reagan signed a proclamation on March 25 making May 6, 1982 National Recognition Day for Nurses. That is where the May 6 anchor comes from.
The ANA then did the settling. In 1990 its Board of Directors expanded the recognition to a week, May 6-12, 1991, and in 1993 it designated May 6-12 as the permanent dates from 1994 onward. National RN Recognition Day followed on May 6 in 1996, National Student Nurses Day on May 8 in 1997, and National School Nurse Day on the Wednesday of the week. In 2020, planning for the Year of the Nurse and Midwife and then overtaken by the pandemic, the ANA extended the week to a full month of recognition in May.
The ANA has announced a theme for the week each spring. It used "The Power of Nurses™" in both 2025 and 2026, with the hashtag #ThePowerOfNurses. As of this writing the ANA has not published a 2027 theme. This page will say so when it does, rather than guess.
Starting with the year it was held in October
May 6-12 every year since 1994, by ANA decision. In 2027 that runs Thursday to Wednesday, which looks odd on a calendar and is entirely correct.
May 6 belongs to the ANA and the United States. May 12 belongs to the International Council of Nurses and the whole world. The week is the bridge between them.
National Nurse Week 1954 ran October 11-16, timed to the centennial of Nightingale's Crimea mission. The May dates arrived with the 1982 proclamation and the ANA's 1990 expansion.
Since 2020 the ANA has recognized all of May as National Nurses Month. The week is still May 6-12; the month is the larger frame around it.
The Canadian Nurses Association holds National Nursing Week during the week containing May 12, so it is May 10-16 in 2027. A hospital near the border can plausibly celebrate twice.
Registered nurses, licensed practical and vocational nurses, advanced practice nurses, nursing students (May 8), and school nurses (the Wednesday) all have a claim on the week. Nobody checks badges at the breakfast.
The public version is "takes care of patients." That is true in the way that "drives" describes a Formula 1 season. A nurse assesses, medicates, monitors, documents, educates, coordinates, and advocates, usually for several patients at once and usually while a call light is going off in a room that just needed the TV remote. The assessment is the skill: noticing that the patient in bed four is quieter than they were an hour ago, and knowing what that means before the numbers agree.
The licenses behind the badge vary. RNs pass the NCLEX-RN and hold a state license; LPNs and LVNs pass their own exam and work under a different scope; APRNs such as nurse practitioners, nurse anesthetists, and clinical nurse specialists add graduate degrees and certification on top. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts about 3.47 million registered nurse jobs in the United States as of 2025 and projects the field to keep growing faster than the average occupation.
Then there is everything the job description leaves out: the pain scale negotiation, the family member who read one article, the med pass that would run on time if the pharmacy tube system agreed, and the twelve-hour shift that is somehow never twelve hours. The week exists to say, in public and on the record, that all of it was noticed.
When the week arrives and you need an actual object to hand over, our Nurses Week gift guide is the place for that. It opens with our own The Unspoken Guide to Nursing, eighty pages of what nurses think during a twelve-hour shift and cannot say out loud.
The Nurses Week questions people actually search for
National Nurses Week 2027 runs May 6-12, 2027, Thursday through Wednesday. The American Nurses Association fixed the observance at May 6 through May 12 for 1994 and every year since, so the dates never move.
May 6 is National Nurses Day, which the ANA promoted and President Reagan proclaimed for 1982. May 12 is International Nurses Day, the birthday of Florence Nightingale, marked worldwide by the International Council of Nurses. In 1990 the ANA expanded the single day into a week running from one date to the other.
The ANA had not published a 2027 theme as of September 2026. It used "The Power of Nurses™" for both 2025 and 2026, with the hashtag #ThePowerOfNurses, and it typically announces the coming year's theme in the spring. This page will be updated when the 2027 theme is out.
Not quite. National Nurses Week is May 6-12. In 2020 the ANA extended the recognition to all of May, now called National Nurses Month, with the week as its centerpiece. Most hospitals still concentrate their celebrations on the week itself.
National Nurses Day is May 6, a United States observance promoted by the ANA that also serves as National RN Recognition Day. International Nurses Day is May 12, run by the International Council of Nurses and observed worldwide on Florence Nightingale's birthday. National Nurses Week starts on the first and ends on the second.
The idea dates to 1953, when Dorothy Sutherland of the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare proposed a Nurse Day to President Eisenhower. The first National Nurse Week was observed October 11-16, 1954, marking the 100th anniversary of Florence Nightingale's mission to the Crimea. The American Nurses Association, founded in 1896, set the permanent May 6-12 dates in 1993.
All three name the same May 6-12 week. National Nurses Week is the ANA's official name; Nurses Week, Nurse Appreciation Week, and RN Appreciation Week are everyday variants. National Nursing Week is the Canadian observance, held during the week containing May 12, so it falls on different dates.