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Sandy Summers, RN, MSN, MPH
Founder and Executive Director
Sandy Summers is Executive Director of The Truth About Nursing. Since 2001 she has led the effort to change how the world views nursing by challenging damaging media depictions of nurses.
Ms. Summers is the co-author of Saving Lives: Why the Media's Portrayal of Nursing Puts Us All at Risk. Her media advocacy work began when she and fellow Johns Hopkins graduate students began the movement in April 2001. (More on our history page.)
She speaks frequently on nursing's image and empowering nurses to change how they are perceived.
Ms. Summers has Masters Degrees in Nursing and Public Health from Johns Hopkins University (2002). She received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Southern Connecticut State University in 1984.
Sandy Summers has worked in cooperation with major corporations in creating accurate images of nursing. In 2009 she led the effort to persuade the Lung Cancer Alliance to remove its "Dr. Lung Love" public service announcement that aimed to increase funding for lung cancer research through a video utilizing the naughty nurse stereotype. In 2007 she convinced Heineken to digitally alter the outfits on frivolous women in a Dos Equis commercial so that they no longer resembled nurses. That year she also convinced Cadbury-Schweppes to cease its Dentyne Ice commercial which featured 2 nurses hopping into the beds of two male patients. In 2006 she convinced Schick to cease its naughty nurse print commercials; and Coors to stop using nurses in its Coors Light Trauma Tour. That same year she convinced Constellation Brands to end its Water Made Naughty ads and tour, featuring naughty nurses selling vodka. In 2005, she persuaded the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to change the name of its major annual minority health campaign from “Take a Loved One to the Doctor Day” to “Take a Loved One for a Checkup Day,” in order to better reflect the key roles nurses play in addressing the very disparities the campaign targets. Her work has won Media Awards from the American Academy of Nursing in 2004 and 2005. The 2005 AAN award was for the Skechers/Christina Aguilera campaign, in which more than 3000 supporters sent letters to the Skechers shoe company about a prominent naughty nurse ad. The company pulled the ad worldwide. The 2004 AAN award recognized her efforts to improve the portrayal of nursing on NBC's influential "ER," efforts that had an effect, as some episodes reflect attempts to address key issues they have been raising with the show's producers since 2001. In late 2004, television psychologist Dr. Phil suggested on the air that the health care system is full of "cute little nurses" who are out to "seduce and marry" physicians "because that's their ticket out of having to work as a nurse." After 1400 supporters flooded the show with emails in response to the campaign, Dr. Phil issued at least two on-air statements of support for nursing. And in 2005, after Summers led a campaign to "ER"'s sponsors, Schering-Plough asked "ER" Executive Producers to develop "stories that highlight accurate roles, responsibilities, skills and contributions of today's modern nursing profession." That same year, Summers led the effort to convince Gillette to pull a TAG Body Spray naughty nurse commercial. This was one in a string of successes in discouraging degrading nurse advertising and product placement by major corporations including Wal-Mart, Disney, CVS, Pennzoil, Tickle, Clairol, Physicians Formula and others.
Prior to her graduate work, Ms. Summers practiced nursing in the emergency departments and intensive care units of some of America's major trauma centers, including San Francisco General Hospital, Charity Hospital at New Orleans, Washington Hospital Center (D.C.), Georgetown Hospital, and D.C. General Hospital. From 1994-97, Ms. Summers lived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where among other jobs, she taught nursing teachers at the Central Nursing School, and undertook nursing research for the International Research Development Centre and Redd Barna (Norwegian Save the Children). She also lived and worked for a year each in New Zealand and St. Thomas in the US Virgin Islands.
Ms. Summers is a member of Sigma Theta Tau, the international nursing honor society, and Delta Omega, the public health honor society.
Ms. Summers lives in Baltimore, Maryland with her husband and two children. She spent her childhood in Vernon-Rockville, Connecticut.
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.
Under Sandy Summers' direction, The Center for Nursing Advocacy won media awards in 2004 and 2005 from the American Academy of Nursing.
Sandy Summers was awarded an Outstanding Alumna award from Southern Connecticut State University in November 2006.
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 and Richard Kimball. (2009, October). "Autonomy." 101 Global Leadership Lessons for Nurses: Shared Legacies from Leaders and their Mentors, ed. Nancy Rollins Gantz. Indianapolis, IN: Sigma Theta Tau International.
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.
Sandy Summers (September 3, 2009). "Reform Won't Work Without Strengthening Nursing" op-ed piece in Kaiser Health News.
Sandy Summers. (May 12, 2009). "Viewpoint: To solve nursing shortage, change attitudes about nurses" op-ed piece in The Baltimore Sun.
"Nursing Our Beer Back to Health," RATTLE, online essay accompanying Winter 2007 issue (No. 28), http://www.rattle.com/rattle28/nursingourbeers.htm.
Kristine Gebbie & Sandy Summers (December 8, 2006). "Nurses' achievements merit international recognition." Op-ed published in the Baltimore Sun.
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:
August 29, 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"
Student Guide:
Sandy Summers. (2009, January). Express Yourself! Nursing2009 guest editorial, vol. 39 (1), p. 6.
Frances Rieth Ward & Sandy Summers."Ethics Education, Television, and Invisible Nurses," The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 8, Issue 12 December 2008, p. 15.
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.
Sandy Summers. (2004, April) "Nursing students should be seen and heard." Imprint, Journal of the National Student Nurses Association, pp 57-59 and 55.
Sandy Summers (1999). Culture crash: Trauma in 1994 Cambodia, Journal of Emergency Nursing, 25 (6), 26A-28A.
See more of the Truth's publications and press coverage on our press coverage page.
Photo by Chris Hartlove.
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