Sandy Summers, RN, MSN, MPH
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.

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.

Photo by Chris Hartlove.

Awards

Saving Lives: Why the Media's Portrayal of Nurses Puts Us All At Risk will receive 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 this fall.

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.

E-mail Sandy Summers

Request a speaking engagement

List of Upcoming and Prior Speaking Engagements

Publications

Sandy Summers & Harry Jacobs Summers. (2009, February). Saving Lives: Why the Media's Portrayal of Nurses Puts Us All at Risk. Kaplan Publishing, New York.

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 (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.

Sandy Summers. (2009, January). Express Yourself! Nursing2009 guest editorial, vol. 39 (1), p. 6.

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.

Frances Rieth Ward & Sandy Summers."Ethics Education, Television, and Invisible Nurses," The American Journal of Bioethics, Volume 8, Issue 12 December 2008, p. 15.

"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.

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.

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.

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