When you join our fellowship program at the Truth About Nursing, you will learn how to closely analyze depictions of nursing, alert to enduring stereotypes and as well as subtle but influential nuances that casual observers often overlook.
Learn moreYou will build leadership skills and learn how to advocate effectively, using time-tested tactics to encourage media creators to present nursing more accurately and reconsider damaging approaches, as we have done with major media projects and ad campaigns.
Learn moreAnd you will learn how to create your own media to educate the public about health, and in doing so show that nurses are college-educated science professionals who save lives.
Learn moreDevelop expertise in analyzing discourse about nursing, advocating in diverse contexts, and actively shaping public understanding of the profession.
Our 18-month fellowship program will help you improve your skills, so you can be an expert media analyst, advocate, and creator.
How is nursing portrayed?
What do nurses do on screen, in writing, on the radio...
Do nurses talk to patients? Do nurses teach each other? Do they educate patients? Advocate for them? Get into debates about life-saving care with physicians? Or do they sit around and gossip about the physicians, making the physicians look more powerful and heroic, while the gossiping nurses look more inconsequential and like observers, instead of courageous, knowledgeable, life-saving professionals?
What characters do the work nurses do in real life? The media's depiction of nurses affects how decision makers see nurses, so it matters to look closely at the underlying message.
When nursing is misrepresented in social media, in legacy news media, or on television, it matters. It affects how patients and others treat nurses, how policymakers fund nursing education and practice, and how students decide whether to enter the profession.
So it matters what we say in response to the media. Nurses must break out of the mindset that the media is impossible to change, because we have shown over and over again that we can change how we are presented.
We will give you hands-on advocacy projects to set up and give you practice using your voice to ask people to improve how they do things.
How the media portrays nurses directly affects how people see and value them. That in turn affects how inclined they are to invest in the profession. Do decision makers know nurses save lives? If more of them did, nursing might not be in crisis in much of the world. Improving media awareness and the way people see nurses will lessen the global nursing shortage, improve patient safety, and save lives.
The Truth About Nursing has been working for better understanding of nursing since 2001.
We are building the next generation of advocates. Join us in being a leader — fighting for the profession and the people we serve.
Sandy Summers, RN, MSN, MPH — founder and executive director of The Truth About Nursing — is an inspiring speaker on nursing advocacy, media literacy, and the future of the profession. School nurses and healthcare organizations are among her most enthusiastic audiences.
Book a Speaking Engagement