Patron Saint of Nurses
St. Camillus de Lellis, feast day 14 July
St. Camillus de Lellis is a patron saint of nurses, with his feast on 14 July, and was formally named patron of the sick and of hospitals by Pope Leo XIII. St. John of God and St. Agatha are also invoked. AngelGuard publishes why more than one answer is correct here.
Quick facts
Why St. Camillus de Lellis?
This is a patronage with several genuine answers, and pages that give only one are simplifying. Camillus de Lellis is the strongest. He was a former soldier and compulsive gambler with a leg wound that never properly healed, who ended up working in the hospital that had once turned him away as a patient. He founded an order to care for the sick, insisted his men serve plague victims and the dying when others would not, and had them wear a red cross on their habits, centuries before that symbol meant what it means now. Pope Leo XIII formally named him patron of the sick and of hospitals, and Pius XI extended it to nurses. St. John of God, who founded a hospitaller order after his own period of mental collapse, shares the patronage of hospitals and nurses and is often named alongside him. St. Agatha appears in this list for a different reason: her patronage of nurses comes through her martyrdom and her association with care of the breast and with those tending the wounded. So the honest answer is that the Church has more than one, and which name a hospital or a nursing school uses often depends on its own founding order.
How to ask their intercession
Nurses commonly ask at the start of a shift, and Camillus is a natural intercessor for the specific problem of caring well when you are exhausted, which was the condition he worked in for most of his life. Families of patients ask for the nursing staff by name more often than the staff realise.