Speaking at the latest meeting of Belfast City Council, Sian said she was ‘proud’ to support the proposal after watching her mother work in frontline services at the same hospital for the past 37 years.
She said: “It’s an honour to support this motion to recognise the hard work and dedication generations of nurses have given to our city – a city whose scars were tended to by those very women and men in our hospitals and in our communities.
“As the daughter of a nurse, I’ve watched my mum raise a family, study for further nursing qualifications and work full time so I can fully recognise nursing goes beyond a job – it’s a vocation.
“I don’t think any of us can ever truly comprehend the horrific injuries some of our nurses will have dealt with and the affect these sights could have had on them.
“I wholeheartedly support creating an annual day to celebrate our nurses, with the added opportunity of acknowledging the increasing pressures that they face in a health service that is stretched beyond capacity.”