15 Affordable Gifts for Nursing School Graduates

Given how challenging nursing school is, every nursing graduate deserves excellent, creative gifts to commend them for pulling through.

Nursing students are put through rigorous academic processes. This is to ensure they end up better equipped to handle critical issues relating to people’s health.

Having gone through all the stress that comes with nursing school and passing the strict NCLEX licensure assessment, your friend, spouse, or child is now set to begin life as a registered nurse.

Therefore, if you’re planning to send a gift to them, it is important you make it quite thoughtful to show you understand all they went through.

However, you don’t need to stress yourself thinking about creative nursing gifts for them. Because in this article, I’ll give you all the nursing gift ideas you need to make a wonderful impression.  

What to Consider When Choosing a Gift for a Nursing Graduate

Before getting a gift for a nursing school graduate, it is important to consider these 3 factors:

1. The Usefulness of the Gift

It is important you consider gifts that will be useful to them, especially as they’re taking their first steps in their career.

The best items to consider in terms of use are their essential needs, like medical equipment, clothing, and accessories.

They might appreciate a fancy, expensive gift from you, but if they do not have any need for it at that point, it would look valueless to them.

2. Your budget

Your budget is also an important consideration when getting gifts for nursing school graduates. It isn’t a good decision to take a loan to buy gifts for someone.

Buy the gifts you can afford. However, you can customize or personalize them to make them more valuable to the recipients.  

3. Return policy

It’s a gift, and no matter how valuable or expensive it is, the recipient may not like it. You have to consider that when choosing gifts for nursing school graduates.

Therefore, to make sure you don’t waste your money buying gifts that don’t seem valuable to the recipient, it is important to buy from a store that has a reasonable return policy.

This is to ensure the nurse can return it for a refund or even exchange it with items they’d value more.  

Are you looking to send your child to nursing school? Look at the Top 8 Nursing Schools in the World

What Do You Get for Someone Graduating from Nursing School?

Valuable medical items like scrubs, stethoscopes, cheat sheets, or hemostats might be the perfect gift idea for that nurse. However, you have to consider your relationship with the person and, ultimately, your budget. 

There are a lot of gift ideas for nursing school graduates that you might consider. From their essential needs to stress-relieving items, you should always consider how useful the gift will be to the recipient. It will help you make a better decision about what to get. 

Here are 15 gift items you can give to your daughter, son, friend, or spouse who is a nursing school graduate:

Essential Gifts Items for Nursing School Graduates

These are items that they need for their day-to-day activities. Every nurse would appreciate having an extra set of their essential tools. So, if you’re thinking of those items they’ll use every day throughout their career, consider these:

1. Stethoscope

Stethoscopes are important tools in the hands of every healthcare worker. The quality of the tool varies.

Things like the sound quality, comfort, and durability are important things to look out for when assessing the quality of a stethoscope.

You can get quality stethoscopes from Littman.

2. Scrubs and Apparel

Just like stethoscopes, nursing scrubs and apparel are daily essentials for nurses. A nursing school graduate will need a couple of quality, comfortable nurse scrubs.

You can get quality scrubs and apparel from Wearfigs or any medical retail store.

3. Shoes

Nurses are always moving around in the hospital, and this requires them to wear comfortable shoes. Flat, comfortable shoes as gifts to a nurse would always be appreciated.

Adidas has amazing, comfortable shoes that you can give a nurse as a gift.

4. Personal Protective Equipment

Nurses are front liners in the healthcare system. Oftentimes, they are the first to be exposed to infected or risky patients.

Getting personal protective equipment (PPE) for nursing school graduates shows how much you care about their safety.

You can get a PPE box filled with facemasks, goggles, face shields, gloves, etc.

You can get PPE gifts for nursing school graduates on Amazon.

5. Memberships and Subscriptions

Just like every other profession, nurses are expected to join professional organizations and pay membership subscriptions monthly.

Professional bodies like the American Nurses Association (ANA) require registered nurses to pay monthly dues of $28 to enjoy membership benefits.

Helping a nursing graduate pay the membership dues for at least a year or two would be a very thoughtful gift to them.

Creative Gift Items for Nursing School Graduates

These are gifts that are designed to increase the enthusiasm of nurses to carry out their work with ease. They might not be essential, but every nurse who receives them will surely appreciate them:

1. Headbands with Buttons for Masks

Nurses wear headbands to keep their hair organized. But since there’s a need to wear nose masks every day now, it’s become important to attach buttons to the headbands.

Nurses connect their nose masks to these buttons to reduce pressure on their ears. So, getting a nurse a couple of these headbands will be great for you.

Amazon sells affordable headbands. 

2. Customized Pens

Nurses always need to write things down. That’s why they carry pens around with them. A pack of retractable pens customized with the recipient’s name is a great gift to give to a nursing school graduate.

3. Nurse Sweatshirts

At times, nurses work throughout the night or in the cold winter. Wearing scrubs and normal nurses’ apparel during those times doesn’t help, as they are made of light materials. 

That is why sweatshirts are great gifts to give to nursing school graduates. You can also take it a notch higher by customizing the sweatshirts with the recipient’s names or initials.

4. Healthcare Workers’ Affirmation Cards Set

Nurses are human beings too. They need positive affirmation and inspiration to carry out their daily activities with joy.

Presenting a nursing school graduate with an affirmation card set will become more useful when the toll of working in the demanding healthcare system starts to set in on them.

There are lots of these on Amazon, and you can get them for anywhere between $5 and $20.  

5. Medical Accessories’ Case

Nurses are naturally very organized. They like having their tools, clothing, and other accessories neatly arranged for ease of access.

A medical accessories’ case will be a thoughtful gift for a nursing school graduate. This case will help them keep their stethoscope and other small but essential medical tools.

6. Nurse Gift Box

You can give a nurse a gift box filled with assorted items of your choice. It can be different healthy snacks or candies, survival equipment like antibacterial sanitizers, hair ties, etc.

Stress-relieving Gift Items for Nurses

After a long, stressful shift, nurses need to relax when they get home. Gift items in this category are items that simplify the tasks at home and relieve nurses from the stress at work:

1. Amazon Echo & Alexa

Amazon Echo and Alexa simply make your life at home easier and more enjoyable. With a simple voice command, you can get Alexa to set alarms, play music, search the internet, and do other important things you’d have taken more time to do.

Therefore, the Amazon Echo and Alexa are beautiful gifts you can give a nurse to make his or her life at home easier.

2. Fitness Watch

A fitness watch helps one to monitor certain health indicators in the body. Nurses are always busy and barely have the time to check and take care of their body.

With a fitness watch, they can track their body functions and know what to do to live a healthier life.  

Fitbit is the best place to get these watches. 

3. Aromatherapy Candles

This is probably one of the best gifts you can give a nursing school graduate. Aromatherapy candles do not only smell nice; they have soothing effects on those who perceive them.

Research has shown that the essential oils in them help promote relaxation and sleep, reduce anxiety and depression, and even help you stay focused on a task.

These candles can be gotten on Amazon for less than $30.

4. Self-Care Products

Self-care products like body massagers, lotions, and sleep-inducing teas might be all you need to make a nursing school graduate happy.

These items help them stay energized and healthy to carry out their responsibilities.

Conclusion

Like the saying goes, “it is not the gift, but the thought that counts.” You mustn’t break the bank to impress anyone. The thought of celebrating with a nursing school graduate and the communication of that thought is enough to spur one on to do great things in the healthcare system.

I’m sure you’ve learned from this article that you can get wonderful gifts for nursing school graduates on a very moderate budget.

You might also want to know about the 30+ Best Christmas Gifts For College Girls

Frequently Asked Questions about Gifts for Nursing School Graduates

Recommendations

• Top 15 Scholarships for Nursing School Students You Should Know
• The 8 Best Nursing Schools in Dallas, Texas
• Emory School of Nursing: All You Need to Know
• The Top 8 Nursing Schools in Massachusetts
• Covenant School of Nursing: All You Need to know