Florence Nightingale Medal: Honoring exceptional nurses and nursing aides - 2019 recipients | International Committee of the Red Cross.

It is with great pleasure that the Nursing Program at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Balamand, announces that Ms. Ursula Rizk has been awarded the prestigious Florence Nightingale Medal. This Award is given to individuals who have shown “exceptional courage and devotion to victims of armed conflict or natural disaster.” Moreover, this Award recognizes leadership and service in the areas of Public Health and Nursing Education. Ms. Rizk was nominated by the National Red Cross or Red Crescent Society and selected by a commission comprised of the ICRC, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies and the International Council of Nurses.

Ms. Rizk is one of those people who have had an illustrious career. She was the first director of the Nursing Program at the University of Balamand from 1997 to 2018. Ms. Ursula Rizk contributed to founding the Order of Nurses, served as the Secretary General from 2003 to 2006, and appointed as a President of the Order for the following three years. Currently, she serves the Order as a consultant. She made her way to academia after a long and significant journey with two major public health service providers: Lebanese Red Cross and UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Work Agency).

Devoted to her work with the Lebanese Red Cross, Ms. Rizk served with the LRC during the most turbulent and tragic years of the Lebanese war. She joined the Red Cross in 1973, leaving in 1991 to join UNRWA as a nursing field officer. The most physically challenging period of her career with the Red Cross was during the 1978 and 1982 Israeli invasions of Lebanon, when she was in charge of the health care centers in the South and head of emergency nursing operations. Ms. Ursula Rizk with her distinguished career, she is a prominent role model to her students, colleagues and nurses in Lebanon and the world beyond.

Congratulations to Ms. Rizk, the Nursing Program and the University of Balamand. Ms. Rizk is an inspiration to many of her students and colleagues. An exemplary nurse of over forty years, she is not only caring, competent and passionate, but also daring and courageous. For those of us who know her, we can truly say that her sense of duty overrides all other fears.