Nurses, the unsung heroes of the medical community, have come a long way since Florence Nightingale first tended to the sick and injured on the battlefields of the Crimean War.

These days, the nurse of the late 20th Century is just as likely to be at the helm of a busy hospital unit or important public health department as at a patient's bedside.

And with these newly found duties -- a complex amalgam of the clinical, the technological and the administrative -- has come a new sense of pride and a new host of responsibilities.

"Because nursing is a `profession' now, we as nurses have to do more than just take care of the sick,'' said Ms Norma Smith, the unit coordinator of King Edward VII Memorial Hospital's Curtis Ward.

"We also have to try and help people from becoming sick and follow up on them once they leave the hospital to ensure that they don't have to come back,'' she said on the eve of Nurses' Week, a week-long celebration of the profession that was kicked off officially on Sunday.

Ms Anita Furbert, a community nurse supervisor for the Department of Health and the president of the Bermuda Nurses' Association since November of last year, added: "Nurses are no longer the doctors' handmaidens. We have a (professional) licence in our own right to defend and protect, and we try to present ourselves as intelligent, thinking people.'' Indeed, the modern-day nurse would appear to require more than just an average intelligence, and must often think quickly on her -- or increasingly his -- feet.

Not only, for example, must the nurse of today see to the medical and physical needs of a patient day or night; in many instances and to varying degrees, the nurse must also wear a variety of proverbial hats and fill a number of non-traditional roles.

Said nurse epidemiologist Ms Rhonda Daniels, who counsels Bermudians on HIV and AIDS for the Department of Health and on Sunday was chosen Bermuda's Nurse of the Year: "It's important that people realise a nurse is not just in the hospital any more. In public health, for instance, you're not only a nurse or a traditional caregiver, but also a social worker, a teacher and everything else in between.'' Even those nurses who continue to work in the hospital, however, have taken on more and more roles, added Mr. Michael Nisbett, a staff nurse on King Edward's Perry Ward.

And he should know, having recently devoted more than five months to the development of a hospital education programme that provides standardised information on some 20 diseases to incoming King Edward patients and thereby promotes self-care once patients are discharged.

Patient education, Mr. Nisbett and other nurses said, is seen as a "vital'' responsibility of those in the profession today.

"We're doing a lot of curing and not enough preventing,'' Ms Daniels said of her job. "If we did more preventative work, we would see a lot fewer cases of relapse and a lot more resources freed up.'' Added Ms Smith, who felt that nurses should -- and do -- take a leadership role on the issue: "That (the education of patients in areas of prevention) is why a lot of us have volunteered in the community.'' Indeed, many nurses, like Ms Hilary Hill, have spent the bulk of their careers in and about the community.

But while Ms Hill, who visits patients at home as the community nurse for Smith's and Hamilton Parishes, recognised the importance of greater self-care and prevention, she also acknowledged a need on the part of patients for a comforting, reassuring presence.

"We do encourage (patients) to be independent,'' Ms Hill said, "but sometimes they need a helping hand when they are discharged (from hospital).'' Clearly, flexibility appears to be one of the key elements to success in the field of nursing, as does an open mind.

"You have to have an open mind,'' Ms Smith emphasised. "I, for example, was not a technical person, but I had to immerse myself in new technologies for the benefit of my patients.'' Added Ms Daniels: "If you put up barriers to change, you will not do well in nursing.'' Despite the profession's fast pace, many challenges and obvious rewards, there is still an admitted stigma to nursing that colours its public perception.

Central to this stigma, some in the field pointed out, is the belief that nurses experience an insufferable amount of stress and professional heartbreak for relatively low wages.

And indeed, few nurses would argue with the notion that they are overworked and underpaid, or that recruitment of new nurses is one of the biggest challenges that faces the profession today.

In the Bermudian context, moreover, many local nurses will complain about their sense of professional isolation here, the difficulty in keeping "updated and informed'' and the general "lack of scope'' of the medical community as a whole.

But the aforementioned pride among nurses is more than often palpable, and there wasn't a single nurse that The Royal Gazette spoke to prior to Nurses' Week who expressed any sense of regret or missed opportunity about his or her choice of job.

"We have decided on a stressful career, a difficult career,'' Ms Smith acknowledged. "But you also have to realise that through all of the stress, through all of the long hours and low pay and negativity, nursing is one of the most rewarding things you can do.'' She added: "I think, on the whole, that it's a wonderful job.'' THE MANY FACES OF NURSING -- From left, nurse epidemiologist Ms Rhonda Daniels, community nurse Ms Hilary Hill, King Edward VII Memorial Hospital staff nurse Mr. Michael Nisbett, Bermuda Nurses' Association president Ms Anita Furbert (seated), nursery assistant coordinator Ms Lisa Blyden, unit coordinator Ms Norma Smith and Bermuda Hospitals Board training officer Ms Veronica Tuckett.