"Will & Grace" letter-writing campaign to make amends

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A copy of our executive director's letter is below--feel free to use it. However, an original letter from you is more powerful. If you have a moment for even one original sentence, please delete the form letter and write one of your own. Just a note about our web page--we are unable to spell check your letter. If you do draft your own letter, to give the letter recipients the best impression of nurses, please consider drafting it in a word processor and spell checking it before pasting it into the window below. We wouldn't have asked, but many of our past letter writers have needed spell check. :) Thank you very much.
Message:*	Dear David Kohan, Max Mutchnick, James Burrows, Jeff Greenstein, Jhoni Marchinko and Alex Herschlag: I am writing to protest the "Will & Grace" episode "Speechless," aired April 22, 2004, which presents a vision of nursing education as a fly-by-night joke leading to a second-rate job for white women and gay men with no better options. I realize the show is intended to be funny, but this episode feeds harmful "naughty" nurse, handmaiden and other stereotypes that have long held the profession back, and that contribute to the critical nursing shortage that now threatens global health. In fact, nurses are highly trained, autonomous professionals who overcome rampant short staffing to save lives every day. I urge you to consult nurses before portraying the profession in the future, and to make amends by contributing in a tangible way to efforts to improve public understanding of nursing. "Speechless" suggests that nursing school can be completed by twits like Jack in five months, with the help of a few days of "medical school" instruction in a language the student does not understand. Nursing school graduations involve no academic elements, but do include half-dressed porn actress nurses, nurses leading S&M sing-alongs, and a speech by the student voted "most popular." Nurses seem to be white women and gay men who can't make it as actors (Jack), porn stars (the blue bra nurse), or musicians (the singing nurse). In short, nursing is a second-rate job requiring only minimal skills. Will does make a few comments that indicate some understanding that real nursing involves more than I see here, but these are lost in the onslaught of stereotypes. And I would have been more impressed if nursing had rejected Jack, who has proven himself unqualified for virtually any job, instead of the other way around. Yes, I know, it's just a sitcom. But most of your show's viewers have little information about who nurses really are and what they really do. Just as advertising works best in a vacuum, confirming a slew of residual stereotypes about nursing (the white woman, the gay man, the angel, the naughty nurse, the airhead) without any real countervailing examples or information can't help but have some negative impact on these viewers. Do you really think your viewers know how many years of college-level study it actually takes to become a registered nurse? Do they know that nurses are not really "angels" or handmaidens? Hollywood often denies that its products can have any negative impact, while claiming credit for fostering positive change, as I assume you (rightly) would for the role of "Will & Grace" in promoting acceptance of gay people. But this episode itself suggests that Hollywood can affect the real world, when Will and Jack mention Diahann Carroll's role as a nurse in the groundbreaking 1968-1971 sitcom "Julia" as a source of inspiration for Jack's nursing studies. If only you would have hired the dignified Ms. Carroll to reprise her role, or at least tried to inject a little of her spirit, to balance the relentless mockery. We are in the midst of a global nursing shortage of critical proportions that is only expected to worsen over the next two decades. Broadcasting these images, even as a joke, reinforces harmful impressions of nursing as an unskilled, marginal job that few would want. In fact, registered nurses receive 2-10 years of college-level training, and studies have shown that patients' lives depend directly on the availability and qualifications of the nurses who care for them. For instance, one recent study of nurse short-staffing--a primary cause and effect of the shortage--found that when the patient load of a nurse is doubled from 4 to 8, post-operative mortality increases by 31%. The nursing shortage affects us all. Many who display negative images of nurses doubt that such images can really harm the nursing profession. However, the media does affect how people think. A 2000 JWT Communications study found that US youngsters in grades 2-10 got their most striking impression of nursing from the fictional television show "ER," and consistent with that show's physician-centric messages, the youngsters found nursing to be a technical field "like shop," a job reserved for "girls" and one too lowly for private school students. Nursing is none of these things. A Kaiser Family Foundation study found that "ER"'s message is so influential that one-third of its viewers use information from the show to make health care decisions. A key reason that nursing is in its current state--understaffed, underfunded and underempowered--is that the work of nurses is undervalued by health care decision makers and the general public, i.e., your audience. I strongly encourage you to consult with qualified nursing experts before portraying nurses or nursing students in the future, to avoid further reinforcing harmful misperceptions. I am not suggesting that nurses cannot be a target of the show's humor, only that care be taken not to present viewers with nothing but negative stereotypes and harmful distortions of the profession. For instance, in a prior episode, you showed Jack's nursing school classmates (all absent from the April 22 episode) to be a mix of genders and ethnicities, a veritable "Bennetton ad," as we believe one character described it. While that episode's vision of nursing left a lot to be desired, it did at least show the nursing students as a diverse group who were fairly serious about their studies. I also encourage you to make amends to the nursing profession by supporting efforts to improve public understanding of the profession in a tangible way. What can "Will & Grace" do? I have a number of ideas, many of which are also posted on The Center for Nursing Advocacy's web site: http://www.truthaboutnursing.org/action/. For instance, "Will & Grace" might undertake image-building efforts such as: funding art that portrays nurses in an accurate light: http://www.truthaboutnursing.org/create funding "Be a nurse for a day" programs:" http://www.truthaboutnursing.org/action/follow_a_nurse.html funding media training programs for nurses: http://www.truthaboutnursing.org/action/media_training.html becoming a supporting member of the Center, helping us increase public understanding of the nursing profession: http://www.truthaboutnursing.org/members/organizational_members.html funding other image campaigns, such as Nurses for a Healthier Tomorrow: http://nursesource.org/sponsor_info.html However you decide to help improve the nursing image, I urge you to consult with the Center for Nursing Advocacy and the nursing/media experts who serve on their board and advisory panel, to avoid adding to the problem. Please be part of the solution to the shortage. Help us improve public understanding of nursing at this critical time. I look forward to hearing from you.
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