We Need a Stronger Nursing Profession -- But How Can We Get There?
Together! You can help us continue our work to improve nursing's image--and build a stronger nursing profession--by making a generous holiday donation to the Truth About Nursing today.
Help us improve patient care by strengthening nursing! Your gift will support our efforts to help the public understand the value of nursing. We raise awareness of the many ways nurses save lives and improve health around the world. When decision-makers understand the value of nurses, it brings more funding for clinical practice, education, research, and residencies.
And since we are a 501(c)(3) charitable organization, your gifts to support our work are tax-deductible as allowed by law. Would you be able to donate $30, $50, $100, $500 or whatever you can afford today?
Why does helping people understand nursing matter?
When people think nursing is unskilled loser work, or that, as in a recent 
Dr. Oz episode, nurses exist to serve physicians, then nurses have a tough time getting the resources they need to provide good nursing care. Nurses are spread too thinly because many have been replaced by lesser-educated workers who can't assess or intervene as nurses can. Decision-makers believe that non-nurses can perform nursing work because they do not understand the nature or value of nursing. That leads to poor care--and sadly, even death.
The Truth About Nursing fights this deadly lack of understanding. Decision-makers get these wrong ideas from many sources, but especially by watching, reading and listening to the omnipresent media. The media constantly tells us that physicians are the only ones whose work matters. Physicians deserve credit for their good work, but not for the work of nurses. And when physicians get credit for nurses' work, they get the funding for it too. That's why nursing residencies only get $1 for every $375 that physicians residencies get. That's why the NIH gives nursing researchers only half of one percent of its budget. Nurses make up the largest body of health professionals in the U.S., working on the cutting edge of health care inventing innovative ways to deliver health care, and half of one percent is all they deserve?
As a report by the Institute of Medicine recently stressed, in order for the health care crisis to end, nurses must be a part of the decision-making process. That means more resources and respect.
Consider how hospitals are managed. Hospitals exist mainly to provide nursing care. If patients did not need nursing care, they would go to an outpatient center. Yet nurses rarely hold positions of leadership in hospitals; few nurses serve on hospital boards. Why should any nursing institution be run by anything less than a majority of nurses? Yet that's the status quo in the vast majority of health institutions across the world.
Nurses must become stronger.
They must become leaders of hospitals, non-profit organizations, and decision-making bodies within the government.
But that's not going to happen unless we work together to change the way people think about nursing. That means changing how the media depicts nurses. Particularly because of the quickly expanding elderly populations in many nations, the future of health care depends on nursing.
If people don't know what nursing is or why it matters, the profession won't get the funding it needs, and the global nursing shortage will continue to spiral out of control. More patients will suffer and die.
This is what we try to prevent every day. Please read about some of our 2010 achievements below.
Please do what you can to help us!
We are a member-supported charity operating on a tiny budget. We depend mainly on volunteer labor. But with more resources, we could do so much more.
If you donate $30, we will send you a copy of our award-winning book Saving Lives: Why the Media's Portrayal of Nurses Puts Us All at Risk. Our book helps readers of all backgrounds better understand how nursing stereotypes work, why they matter, and most importantly, what we can do about it.
Please click here to see our awesome member gifts, including bumper stickers, pens, RN patches, and DVDs of good depictions of nursing. We have a full range of things you can give your friends, family and colleagues for the holidays that will help change their thinking about nursing.
Please donate today! Thank you!!
So, what have we done this year to improve nursing's media image?
We continue our work to influence the widest possible audience, including in the following ways.
Our publications
Saving Lives
Saving Lives: Why the Media's Portrayal of Nurses Puts Us All at Risk continues to reach nurses and members of the general public. With your help we have delivered hundreds of copies of the book to influential media and decision-makers. You can get a free copy with a $30 donation today. At the beginning of this year, Saving Lives won an American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award. It also won a media award from the Connecticut Nurses Association last month and a Sigma Theta Tau award last year.
Op-Eds
When we generate press coverage, millions of people hear our message that stereotypical depictions of nurses are impeding our ability to solve the global nursing shortage. This changes the way people think.
We got an op-ed published on BBC News: "Is the media image of nursing damaging the profession?"
An op-ed we originally wrote for Kaiser Health News last year was republished this year for DC Nurse, New Jersey Newsroom, and the New Jersey Institute for Nursing Newsletter.
Nursing Times
The Nursing Times, a leading U.K. nursing journal, is in the midst of publishing an 11-part series of articles by Truth leaders on the image of nursing.
Presentations and Speaking Engagements
Truth founder and executive director Sandy Summers spoke this year to groups at the Connecticut Nurses Association, the University of Maryland, Pace University, George Washington University, Southern Connecticut State University, the University of Arkansas, Memorial Hospital West, and the Maryland Hospital Association. She also did a webinar for ADVANCE for Nurses that is still accessible online. Book a speaking engagement today!
Press coverage
In-depth interviews
Voice of America did a feature report on the Truth's work, which reached people in most nations across the world.
District of Columbia Nurse did an in-depth interview on our work.
Mariah Carey video campaign
In March, the Truth's campaign to persuade Mariah Carey to reconsider her use of naughty nurse imagery in the video for "Up Out My Face" has received coverage in the Hartford Courant, the Baltimore Sun, the Calgary Herald, ADVANCE for Nurses, Scrubs Magazine, HCPro, Healthleaders, the India Times, the Dallas Morning News, Modern Healthcare and other news sources.
Truth About Nursing Awards
News about the Truth About Nursing Awards appeared in The Baltimore Sun, The Post-Standard, Carolina Nursing News, Scrubs magazine, American Journal of Nursing, HCPro, and Evolve. The Baltimore Sun piece was reprinted in NewsDay, the Chicago Tribune, the Arizona Republic, The Tampa Tribune, the India Times, the Deseret News, The State, and the Island Packet.
Assorted other press coverage
The Truth was featured heavily in Laura Stokowski's great Medscape article, "A Letter to Hollywood: Nurses Are Not Handmaidens." The article featuring Stokowski's classic opening statement: "Dear Hollywood: We, the nurses of the world, have something to say to you."
The Los Angeles Times column "The Unreal World" featured commentary by Truth executive director Sandy Summers about the depiction of nursing in a recent episode of NBC's Mercy.
The Fayetteville Observer covered the Truth's perspective on Nurse Jackie and HawthoRNe.
Scrubs Magazine and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation publications also featured our work.
Our chapters
Our Las Vegas chapter made local headlines this year when they protested a local nightclub's naughty nurse contest. We continue to develop chapters across the world and now have over 50 chapters in nine countries, with more on the way. Each chapter is reaching out to its local media to improve public understanding of nursing. With each chapter member taking ownership of his/her local community, we can effect global change. If you'd like to start a chapter in your hometown, please let us know today!
The Reach of Our Website
Our website, which is 1700 pages and growing, received nearly 2 million pageviews last year--reaching nurses and members of the public all over the world.
Please donate now. Thank you!
Sandy Summers, RN, MSN, MPH
Executive Director
The Truth About Nursing
203 Churchwardens Rd.
Baltimore, MD USA 21212-2937
office 1-410-323-1100
ssummers@truthaboutnursing.org
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Educate the world that nurses save lives!
