Biography of Harry Jacobs Summers

| More

Harry Jacobs Summers
Senior Advisor

Harry Summers has served as The Truth About Nursing's Senior Advisor since its inception. From 2003 until 2008, he also served as Senior Advisor to The Center for Nursing Advocacy.

Mr. Summers is co-author of Saving Lives: Why the Media's Portrayal of Nurses Puts Us All at Risk.

Since 1998, he has been a litigation attorney with the Federal Election Commission, which enforces federal election campaign law, in Washington, DC. In the mid-1990's, Mr. Summers spent several years in USAID-funded legal positions in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. He served as an American Bar Association Legal Advisor to the Cambodian Ministry of Commerce, and as a Program Officer at The Asia Foundation, where he led a multi-national team in creating commercial law texts and teaching law to Cambodian government and court officials. In the early 1990's, Mr. Summers worked as a litigator with Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison in San Francisco. Prior to that he spent a year in New Zealand on a Fulbright scholarship studying indigenous fishing rights at the University of Auckland.

Mr. Summers has a J.D. from Georgetown University (1989) and a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Columbia College (1985). His undergraduate years included a semester of study in Paris and work for an independent film company in New York.

He lives in Baltimore with his wife and two children. He was born and raised in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

Awards

Publications

Awards

Saving Lives: Why the Media's Portrayal of Nurses Puts Us All At Risk received the following awards:

An AJN Book of the Year Award;

The 2009 International Award for Nursing Excellence in Public Print Media from Sigma Theta Tau International, the Honor Society of Nursing, at the group's biennial convention in November 2009;

A media award from the Connecticut Nurses Association in October 2010.

Through the work of Harry Summers, The Center for Nursing Advocacy won media awards in 2004 and 2005 from the American Academy of Nursing.

Publications

Books and chapters within books

Sandy Summers & Harry Jacobs Summers. Saving Lives: Why the Media's Portrayal of Nurses Puts Us All at Risk. Kaplan Publishing, New York. Paperback May 2010.

Sandy Summers & Harry Jacobs Summers. (2008). Chapter 7, pp. 105-129, Decision-Making in Nursing: Thoughtful Approaches for Practice, Sandra B. Lewenson and Marie Truglio-Londrigan, eds., Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Inc. Winner of an American Journal of Nursing book of the year award 2008.

Sandy Summers & Harry Jacobs Summers. (2006). Changing Poor Portrayals of Nurses in the Media: The Center for Nursing Advocacy. In D. J. Mason, J. K. Leavitt, & M. W. Chafee (Eds.). Policy and politics in nursing and health care, 5th ed. (pp. 184-194). St. Louis, MI: Saunders Elsevier.

Lay publications

Sandy and Harry Summers, BBC News op-ed: "Is the media image of nursing damaging the profession?", June 9, 2010.

"Nursing Our Beer Back to Health," RATTLE, online essay accompanying Winter 2007 issue (No. 28), http://www.rattle.com/rattle28/nursingourbeers.htm.

Nursing publications

September 14, 2011 -- "Do not disturb: undervaluation in progress," Nursing Times.

Nursing Times published a series of pieces by Sandy and Harry Summers on the nursing image:

September 6, 2010 -- "A culture of respect"

September 9, 2010 -- "Does nursing's media image matter?"

September 22, 2010 -- "The unskilled nurse"

October 7, 2010 -- "The handmaiden"

October 20, 2010 -- "The naughty nurse"

November 2, 2010 -- "Not good enough for a feminist?"

November 20, 2010 -- "No holier than thou"

December 3, 2010 -- "Battle axes and frustrated shrews"

December 19, 2010 -- "Cheap substitutes?"

January 18, 2011 -- "The image of nursing: Everyone's responsibility"

January 28, 2011 -- "The image of nursing: It's in your hands"

Claire Fagin, Sandy Summers & Harry Jacobs Summers. "The Nursing Shortage," Kango Jissen no Kagaku (Science of Nursing Practice), the Japanese Journal of Nursing Science, Nov. 2005, Vol. 30, No. 12, pp. 37-45, and Dec. 2005, Vol. 30, No. 13, pp. 48-57 (co-author with Claire M. Fagin and Harry Jacobs Summers); republication as part of book Nursing Strategies to Protect People's Lives, LifeSupport Company (2008).

Sandy Summers & Harry Jacobs Summers. (2004). "Viewpoint: Media 'Nursing': Retiring the Handmaiden: What viewers see on ER affects our profession." American Journal of Nursing 104 (2), p. 13.

See more of the Truth's publications and press coverage on our press coverage page.

Photo by Chris Hartlove.

| More