|
|
Saving Lives: Why the Media's Portrayal of Nurses Puts Us All at Risk
by Sandy and Harry Jacobs Summers
Quick Links
|
Undoubtedly, the media can make or break an image! Case in point, the number of medical students who noted a preference for emergency medicine rose during the heyday of ER.
If that's the case, then wouldn't the absence of nurses on the big and small screen --- for example in House --- or the poor or inaccurate portrayal, such as in Grey's Anatomy and many commercials, impact the profession and recruitment of people into nursing?
You bet, say Sandy Summers, MPH, MSN, RN, and Harry Jacobs Summers, co-authors of Saving Lives: Why the Media's Portrayal of Nurses Puts Us All at Risk.
Sandy began noting the way nurses are presented in the media while studying for her master's in public health, lamenting over a lot of inaccurate portrayals. She and other like-minded nurses made their views known in what would eventually become thetruthaboutnursing.org.
Not afraid to make calls, Sandy has battled advertising executives, coaxing them through persistence and repeated and new arguments that depicting scantily clad, buxom women as nurses in ads may sell a product, but these images are inaccurate and damage a profession essential to the health of many in this country.
After 7 years of monitoring all types of media, the Summers were approached by a publisher and asked to write about their observations. Eight months later, Saving Lives was completed.
Knowing at some point in every American's life each of us ends up in a hospital, requiring care from a nurse, we all want the best nurses we can get. Sandy and Harry skillfully argue that, to get the best and brightest into the field, the media needs to show nurses doing what they really do, using evidence-based practice mixed with critical thinking, and a solid knowledge of medicine and science.
What are the stereotypes that plague nursing (and there are quite a few)? Which are the most damaging? What's the best way to improve the media's knowledge of nursing and the image of nurses on the large and small screen? Are the season's newest stars in Nurse Jackie, HawthoRNe and Mercy showing "real" nursing?
Sandy and Harry Summers have many answers. Watch the video to get started and be sure to read their book. Then join our discussion.
Read a short summary of our next ADVANCE Book Club for Nurses offering, Impaired: A Nurse's Story of Addiction and Recovery by Patricia Holloran. The discussion begins Jan. 6. Then March 3 we'll go back in time to World War II and We Band of Angels: The Untold Story of American Nurses Trapped on Bataan by the Japanese by Elizabeth Norman.
Click here to join our discussion!
Click Here to listen to past interviews from the book club.
|