Speak To the Media

• Sign our petitions--please sign and send our letter or write your own letter for each of our campaigns. Thank you!  

• Create a "Be a Nurse for a Day" program--ask your local media to shadow you at work so they can learn what you do and create media about it.
   
• Invite your local media to lunch to educate them about the work of nurses and to encourage them to cover the full range of nursing going on in your community. Feel free to contact the Truth to discuss further.
   
• Contact the US media by zip code.
   

Join the Coalition for Better Understanding of Nursing!

The Coalition for Better Understanding of Nursing is a working group of The Truth About Nursing. The Coalition seeks to strengthen nursing and improve the health care system by educating the public and decision-makers about the value of nursing and the central role nurses play in health care. Please learn more about the Coalition's work to change how society views nursing here.
 

Speak To the World

• Order our "SAVE LIVES. BE A NURSE." bumper stickers and car magnets and educate the world about the value of nursing.
   
• Hang our disruptive innovation posters and create some provocative street art to educate the wider public about the value of nursing.
   
• Hang our poster on nursing autonomy and responsibility and distribute it widely.
   
• Start a health radio show, like HealthCetera with Diana Mason & Barbara Glickstein or The Nurses Rock Radio Show with Diane Reed or the Sunday Night Sex Talk radio with Maureen McGrath or All About Nursing with Joyce Batcheller. Do health minutes and work to become a local health correspondent for television and radio news programs, like television commentator and author Pat Carroll.
   
• Who's a patient advocate anymore? All nurses should all be. Post our patient advocacy flyer on patients' walls and breakrooms. Download and distribute freely.
   
• Fight for a seat at the decision-making table
   
• Teach people that the power structure in hospitals is a tribe, not a food chain.
   
• Write an op-ed for publication in a major newspaper or magazine. Get quick tips on how to write an effective op-ed and a list of op-ed placement opportunities, requirements and contact info.
   
• When you do speak publicly, make sure that readers, listeners or viewers know that you are a nurse so that nursing gets credit for your work, instead of credit going to some undefined expert. See Elizabeth Winslow's ViewPoint "We Silence Our Profession When We Fail to Identify Ourselves as Nurses" in the August 2012 AJN.
   
• Blog about your experiences practicing nursing.
   
• Wear the RN patch on your uniform. Wear uniforms that make nurses look like professionals.
   
• Create patient education materials--videos, articles, books, guides and web sites. The public needs to know that nurses are health education experts.
   
• Use nurse-friendly language. Do not allow physicians to give you "orders." Instead, use "prescriptions" or "care plans" so that they do not wrongly think that they are someone they can order around. Chuck Reuter and Virginia Fitzsimons wrote a great op-ed in the American Journal of Nursing (August 2013) about this called "Physician Orders."
   
• Transform your innovative ideas for new health care practices and products into reality. Consider this article by inventor Steve Schmutzer about how to bring product ideas to market.
   
• Promote nursing innovations in the clinical settings such as did the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses.
   
• Develop video news web programs, to help you summarize your work and make it accessible to the media. For example, consider this clip by former US AIDS Czar Kristine Gebbie, RN, DrPH, Associate Professor, Columbia School of Nursing.
   
• Create, read or support nurse-friendly media and art.
   
• Order merchandise, including RN patches, and send gifts through the Truth to support our work.
   

Strengthen the nursing profession through:

• Recruitment into the profession;
   
• Fixing the huge funding disparity between nursing and other health careers;
   
• Advocating for patients! Or see the pdf archive
   
• Increasing the number of men in the profession. Join the AAMN or men's nursing organization in your country--whether you're a man or not;
   
• Working for magnet status at your institution;
   
• Working beyond Magnet recommendations to improving nursing at your institution. See our recommendations.
   
• Implementing shared governance at your institution (read how it works);
   
• Working for safe staffing levels;
   
• Nurturing the next generation of nurses;
   
• Strengthening and empowering school nurses;
   
• Provide holistic care
   
• Donating to Nurses House to support nurses in need;
   
• Strengthening holism practice and awareness in nursing by joining the American Holistic Nurses Association; and also join Urban Zen and bring alternative modalities into the clinical setting to strengthen patient care.
   
• Create nurse-run patient advocacy organizations to strengthen nurses' ability to advocate for patient health;
   
• Advocate for nursing with your legislators. Read this how-to manual from Advance for Nurse Practitioners.
   
• Create health care environments using evidence-based designs to promote better patient outcomes and less stress on nurses. For guidance, seek help from The Nursing Institute for HealthCare Design.
   
• Start a summer camp for kids that inspire them to be nurses, like the BONES camp at University of North Carolina Wilmington as portrayed in the article "Fake disaster may make for real careers."
   
• Join Energise for Excellence in the UK
   
• Become a nurse! 

Present a Positive Personal Image

When nurses live healthy lifestyles and look like healthy people, they have more credibility as health experts. We encourage nurses to:

Join Our Member Action

Engage Friends and Colleagues

• Distribute our news alerts by email (sign up, or see news alert archives).
   
• Create bulletin boards of our news alerts at your work place or school.
   
• Distribute our brochures to your colleagues, friends and students--just let us know how many you need at info@truthaboutnursing.org
   
• Giving a presentation? Get a draft powerpoint presentation and some film clips here.
   
• Start a Nurse Shadowing Program for medical students and interns at your hospital or school. We must educate physicians as to the nature of nursing work so they can play a more positive role in creating nursing-related media, and so we can develop more collaborative relationships, which lead to better patient outcomes. See a sketch of a nurse shadowing program at Dartmouth.
   

Learn How To Affect and Create Media

• Read our award-winning book Saving Lives: Why the Media's Portrayal of Nursing Puts Us All at Risk published by Oxford University Press
   
• Take boot camp from the Millikin University in Illinois, where students will "take part in a variety of hands-on activities, interactive demonstrations, and patient simulations"
   
• Get media training through the Center for Health Journalism at George Washington University with Diana Mason.
   
• Develop media skills through the American Nurses Association mini training manual on media relations for nurses.
   
• Also see another media training manual put together by housing advocates that also may be useful, if you apply the theory to nursing instead of housing.
   
• Read an article on 12 media myths.
   
• Read an excellent and succinct earned media outreach kit on the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website.
   
• Learn how to write powerful letters.
   
• Get media savvy through media training--so you'll feel more confident presenting your ideas to the media.
   
• How to Promote Yourself as a TV Guest by the Author of "You're On The Air" explains how to be a TV guest.
   
• Get media training by Donna Cardillo, RN.
   
• Read one of the best advertisements of nursing by the British Columbia Nurses' Union.
   
• Consider reading From Silence to Voice, which helps nurses learn how to speak to the media.
   

 
Legislative resources

Contact US elected officials and government agency representatives on current nursing legislation from the National League of Nursing.
   

Teach the public how to get well