Students attend sold-out Nurse Blake event
News
By: Shannon Shevlin
Creative Services Student Writer
PHOTO: Nurse Blake with Julie Sanford, Director of the School of Nursing
JMU School of Nursing (SON) students, alumni, faculty, staff and friends attended a one-of-a-kind show designed just for nurses to celebrate the joys and challenges of their profession. An Orlando native, Blake Lynch graduated with his BSN from the University of Central Florida in 2014. While he has worked in a variety of nursing roles ranging from medical-surgical to trauma and ICU, Lynch doubles as an internet sensation known as “Nurse Blake”. With content that reaches more than 12,000,000 people every month, Nurse Blake has over 875,000 followers and his videos have been viewed more than 200,000,000 times His hilarious, honest and relatable spirit made him an ideal guest for JMU nursing.
In February 2019, Nurse Blake ran an online contest, promising a live show for fans in five cities that received the most votes. Contending sites spanned across the U.S. and Canada, but Harrisonburg, VA won in the final count among four other cities including Queens, New York; Dallas, Texas; Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Las Vegas, Nevada.
In addition to delivering an entertaining and inspiring show, Nurse Blake is an advocate for nurses and patients everywhere. He has founded several successful social campaigns including Nurses Support Their Young and Banned4Life.
“As other nurses follow in our footsteps, we need to always inspire, motivate and help them. We are all in this together,” said Nurse Blake about changing the culture of entry level nursing through his Nurses Support Their Young initiative. The organization strives to end the ‘nurses eat their young’ cliché, and build healthier work environments for all.
In 2013, Blake founded Banned4Life to raise awareness about an outdated FDA policy that permanently bans gay men from donating blood. After being turned away from donating blood because of his identity as a gay man, Blake decided to take action. The movement’s passionate energy has since led to a revised FDA policy, lifting the lifetime ban in 2015. While there is still more progress to be made, Blake’s initiative curbed discriminatory effects of the policy, allowing more people to meet blood shortage needs and save lives.
“Its not about the letters behind your name but about what you do with them,” said Nurse Blake to students on Monday, April 15. He reminded them how nurses make a difference in the lives of patients and they should take that seriously. “What are you passionate about?” he asked. His message to students was to find and pursue their passions, and not to give up on the impact they hope to make as a nurse.
For more information about Nurse Blake or to watch his video content, visit https://www.nurseblake.com
