Please support the Truth About Nursing and our efforts
to change how the world thinks about nursing in 2014!
From the Truth's Board of Directors:
Dear Supporter,
Happy Holidays! Thank you for your support over the year and working with us to change how the world thinks about nursing. We have had some great successes this year, including persuading MTV to limit the damage from its show Scrubbing In and to take steps to convey what nursing really is. But it's a struggle to create change with our current level of resources.
Would you be able to donate just $25 to help the Truth About Nursing continue our work? Or would you like to book our executive director Sandy Summers for a speaking engagement? Please see our member gifts, available with each donation. Thank you!
So far in 2013, the Truth About Nursing has received $4,600 in individual contributions, $16,000 from our executive director's speaking engagements, and $2,000 in donated royalties from the upcoming edition of our book Saving Lives, for a total of $22,600. Some people have told us that they think our offices occupy several floors of a skyscraper! That is flattering because it indicates that we are able to get things done. But we chuckle because the reality is that we occupy a small donated office in the home of our executive director and senior advisor, who volunteer all the time they give to the Truth.
Even so, we have been able to continue advocating and educating, telling the mass media, powerful decision-makers, and the public at large what nurses really do to save lives and improve outcomes, as you can see through the Truth's main webpage. Your donations finance our internet presence, media monitoring, computer equipment, office supplies, and other business expenses.
But we need your help now to reach our goal of $25,000 in annual revenue by year's end. Since we are a 501(c)(3) charity, your gifts to support our work are tax-deductible as allowed by law. This is one of your last chances for 2013 -- please donate now! You could also help the Truth by having Saving Lives be required reading if you teach a class on nursing professionalism.
Whatever you can afford, your gift will support our efforts to improve understanding of nursing, which will help our patients live longer, healthier and happier lives.
Why does helping people understand nursing matter?
When people think nursing is unskilled loser work, or that 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 health professionals whose work matters. Physicians deserve credit for their good work, but they do not deserve credit for the work that nurses do. 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 physician residencies get. That's why the NIH gives nursing researchers only half of one percent of its budget, even though nurses work on the cutting edge of health care and make up the largest body of health professionals.
As the 2010 report on nursing by the Institute of Medicine 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. Hospitals exist mainly to provide nursing care, but nurses rarely hold positions of leadership; 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.
Saving Lives back in print!
Our book Saving Lives: Why the Media's Portrayal of Nurses Puts Us All at Risk continues to influence nurses, the media, and members of the public around the world. You can get the paperback from Amazon. Saving Lives is also available in digital form through Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and iTunes. For every $30 you donate now, we will send you a copy of the book in the format of your choosing.
Saving Lives has won an American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award and an award from the international nursing honor society, Sigma Theta Tau. Many nursing professors use the book as a text to discuss nursing in society.
Presentations and Speaking Engagements
You can also help support the Truth About Nursing by inviting our founder and executive director, Sandy Summers, to speak at your conference, graduation, nurses' week event or other gathering. Honoraria from these engagements have been a large part of the Truth's resources, as you can see from the figures at the top of this letter. Click to see Sandy's schedule, abstract, biography or references from past speaking engagements. Please contact us to schedule an event.
Our posters
Place Truth About Nursing posters at your school or workplace!
Tell colleagues and patients the truth! Our "I Am Your Registered Nurse" poster presents nurses as autonomous professionals on whom patients can rely. The poster explains that nurses are modern science professionals who protect and advocate for patients and empowers nurses to meet those challenges. Designed for the bedside, the poster comforts patients by educating them about the care environment and assuring them that nurses are there to fend for them.
Or consider the Truth's "Can Short Dresses Cause Short Staffing?" poster. This one takes humorous aim at the naughty nurse image that continues to haunt advertisements and other media, especially those aimed at males. The poster connects the naughty nurse image with the broader undervaluation that leads to gross underfunding of nursing education, research, and practice, ultimately threatening patients.
For every dollar that you donate, we'll send you up to 4 posters to hang at your school or workplace. Just email us at info@truthaboutnursing.org to tell us how many you'd like and where to send them. Thank you!
Nurses must become stronger
More nurses must become leaders in hospitals, non-profit organizations, and 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 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.
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 that will help change their thinking about nursing.
Please donate now to support our work. Thank you!
Gina Pistulka, RN, PhD, MSN, MPH, Chair
Kelly Bower Joffe, RN, PhD, MSN, MPH, Treasurer
Rich Kimball,
RN, PhD, MSN, MPH, Secretary
Christine Stainton, RN, MSN, Board Member
Sandy Summers, RN, MSN, MPH, Board Member, Executive Director
The Truth About Nursing
203 Churchwardens Rd.
Baltimore, MD USA 21212-2937
office 1-410-323-1100
board@truthaboutnursing.org
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Educate the world that nurses save lives!
