The Truth About Nursing Decade Awards

Best and Worst Media Portrayals of Nursing 2010-2019

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The Best

Most Improved

The Worst

Call the Midwife, (2012-present) Created by Heidi Thomas, from a memoir by Jennifer Worth; Heidi Thomas and Pippa Harris, executive producers; BBC and PBS. For a long-running drama that portrayed skilled, autonomous nurse-midwives delivering babies and providing a wide range of effective care to poor patients in 1950s and 1960s London.
Nurse Jackie, (2009-2015) Created by Evan Dunsky and Liz Brixius & Linda Wallem; executive producers Linda Wallem, Liz Brixius, Christine Zander, Mark Hudis, Caryn Mandabach, Richie Jackson, Clyde Phillips, Tom Straw, Liz Flahive; Showtime. For a dark comedy featuring substance-abusing emergency nurse Jackie Peyton and her protégé Zoey Barkow as fierce and resourceful patient advocates, providing expert holistic care to patients in New York City.
Mercy (2009-2010) Created by Liz Heldens; executive producers Gail Berman, Lloyd Braun, Liz Heldens, Gretchen Berg, and Aaron Harberts; NBC. For a drama with nurse Veronica Callahan, a troubled Iraq War veteran, ably leading a crew of Jersey City hospital nurses who displayed strong psychosocial skills and fought for patients in innovative ways.

Best feature film 2010-2019

• Big Hero 6

  Written by Jordan Roberts, Daniel Gerson, Robert L. Baird, directed by Don Hall and Chris Williams; Disney.

  For an animated adventure, a kind of Guardians of Silicon Valley, that featured a heroic robot "nurse" with diverse problem-solving skills, a vast knowledge of health care, and a persistent holistic focus. 

Best documentary

• The American Nurse

  Carolyn Jones, director and executive producer, Lisa Frank, executive producer; Diginext Films.

  For a fine feature-length documentary, based on the director's 2012 book of portraits, that profiled five nurses in practice settings including home health, a prison hospice, outpatient care of military veterans, and hospital labor and delivery.

Best news articles and short features about nursing 2010-2019

Allana Akhtar, Business Insider For numerous helpful stories about the challenges nursing faces today, including articles in 2019 with the following dates and subjects: Dec 5 — worst states to be an NP; Nov 26 — nursing expertise that patients should know about; Oct 31 — naughty nurse costumes; Sep 20 — a strike by nurses in four states; Sep 16 — appointment of a dentist as interim director of the National Institute of Nursing Research; Aug 21 — a day in the life of a nurse; Aug 20 — nurse suicides; July 15 — the best part of being a nurse; May 24 — the toughest part of being a nurse; May 15 — calling all nurses: talk to me! Note to nurses: Pitch reporter Allana Akhtar stories — she is interested in nursing!
Tina Rosenberg, The New York Times For articles explaining the value of the work of advanced practice registered nurses: "The Family Doctor, Minus the M.D.," October 24, 2012, and "In Delivery Rooms, Reducing Births of Convenience," May 7, 2014, New York Times.
Julia Bucher, The New York Times, July 3, 2013 For "Advice for Caregivers of Relatives With Cancer," "Ask an Expert" column, a long piece in which the nursing professor and advanced practice nurse gave practical, sensitive advice about many aspects of coping with cancer.
Jeneen Interlandi, New York Times, May 27, 2019 For "Nurses Know the Human Costs of Care. That's Why Many Want 'Medicare for All,'" an op-ed explaining why many nurses support efforts to expand Medicare coverage.
Rebecca Tan, Washington Post, September 20, 2019 For her op-ed "Why nurses, America's most trusted professionals, are demanding 'climate justice,'" explaining how nurses are addressing problems with the Earth, as it is in a "multi-system failure."
Trevor Wilhem, Windsor Star, November 30, 2019 For "Ontario nurses group launches petition to get Windsor police to carry naloxone," which highlighted the advocacy of nurses at the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario for police officers to start carrying naloxone with them to prevent opioid deaths.

Best long-form journalism on nursing

Larissa MacFarquhar, The New Yorker, July 11 & 18, 2016. For "The Threshold," a compelling report describing the work of hospice nurse Heather Meyerend, who provides expert physical and psychosocial care to patients and family members in South Brooklyn.
Emily Bobrow, The New Yorker, Dec. 22, 2019. For "A Midwife in the North Country," an engaging article on the efforts of nurse midwife Sunday Smith to bring effective, holistic obstetric care to underserved populations in upper New York State.

Best coverage of nurse innovators

Stephen Key, Forbes, August 29, 2018. For "How Three Women Beat the Odds to Become Award-Winning Inventors," which spotlighted nurse Rachel Walker, who has created impressive inventions for cancer patients, and who also addressed the barriers nurses and patients face—including how to overcome them.
Blake Farmer, NPR, July 22, 2019. For "Nurses In Tennessee Preach 'Diabetes Reversal,'" — which highlighted the community-based, holistic work of two nurses to reduce the harmful effects of diabetes.
Richard Knox, National Public Radio (NPR), January 27, 2014. For "Silencing Many Hospital Alarms Leads To Better Health Care," on nurses' efforts to address the alarm fatigue that takes hundreds of lives every year in the clinical setting.
Stacey Burling, The Philadelphia Inquirer, April 20, 2010. For the article "More nurses, less death," which addresses disputes about nurse staffing, including proposed legislative measures and research on how understaffing affects the quality of care.
Jane Elliott, BBC News, January 1, 2010. For "Bringing music medicine to the NHS," reporting that the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery in London has appointed its first "composer in residence."

Kaci Hickox For her courage in advocating for humane, science-based policies regarding health workers who treat Ebola, reducing public fear and improving the treatment of those workers, including through "Her story: UTA grad isolated at New Jersey hospital in Ebola quarantine," Houston Chronicle, October 25, 2014, and "Stop calling me 'The Ebola nurse'" The Guardian, November 17, 2014.
Three nurses for their first-person accounts of Ebola care in The Guardian piece "'A teenage girl bled to death over two days': Ebola nurses describe life and death on the frontline," October 13, 2014.
Bridget Mulrooney For explaining what it is like to be at the forefront of Ebola care;
Sue Ellen Kovack For a detailed account of what nurses do in treating Ebola, including the daunting infection control procedures, as well as the experiences of Ebola patients;
Anine Kongelf For explaining the highs and lows of nurses caring for Ebola patients, emphasizing the joy when there are survivors.
Pam Cipriano For op-eds she wrote as president of the American Nurses Association on public health issues: "Let nurses do the ethical thing" in support of the Navy nurse who refused to force-feed prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, May 22, 2015, The Washington Post; "Antidote to Fear: Identify, Isolate and Inform" to quell the hysteria around the emerging Ebola crisis, January 12, 2015, The Huffington Post; and others 1, 2, 3).
Theresa Brown For her op-eds promoting better health care policies: "Choosing How We Die," "Abortion wasn't always taboo in America," and "Ebola will elevate respect for nurses."
Mona Shattell For her op-ed on trucker health "Long-haul sweatshops," March 9, 2016, New York Times, and for her piece on the naughty nurse stereotype: "Hooters opens nursing school," Huffington Post, May 8, 2013. (Dr. Shattell is a member of The Truth About Nursing's advisory panel.)
Jason Jaewan Lee For his op-ed "Criminalizing health care professionals' mistakes dodges the real problem," Philadelphia Inquirer, February 21, 2019.
Jocelyn Anderson For her April 25, 2019 op-ed "This important state policy change on sexual assault care is long overdue," in the Pennsylvania Capital-Star advocating for the reversal of a Pennsylvania state policy that deprives patients of access to Sexual Assault Forensic Examiner (SAFE) nurses.
Anonymous For the January 14, 2015 op-ed "A&E nurse: am I on the road to burnout and destruction?" published in the Guardian, a harrowing account of understaffing and other challenges of emergency nursing, including the accompanying moral distress.

MarySue Heilemann For organizing the 2011 and 2012 conferences at UCLA to bring Hollywood and nursing together; for speaking on nursing in the media at a United Nations' forum on women and at the director's lecture at NINR; and for research on how media on nursing affects public health, including the creation of "Catalina: Confronting My Emotions," a multi-media webisode with psychotherapeutic bonus videos featuring a Latina nurse character who guides viewers to mental health resources. (Dr. Heilemann is a member of The Truth About Nursing's advisory panel.)
Diana Mason, Barbara Glickstein, and Kristi Westphaln For undertaking important research on the extent to which nurses are featured or quoted in the news media, as well as the reasons for nurses' infrequent appearances in that media, in the Woodhull Study Revisited.
Rodrigo Cardoso For his research published in books and articles, most of which are in Portuguese, but see "The exposure of the nursing profession in online and print media." (Dr. Cardoso is a member of The Truth About Nursing's advisory panel.)
Peggy Chinn and Adeline Falk-Rafael For their blog feature "Inspiration for Activism," which highlights the work of nurse activists, and for hosting the 2018 nursing activism conference, which inspired nurses to work together to amplify their voices.

For nurses who are brave and articulate enough to speak on air about health care, and in doing so show society that nurses are college-educated science professionals who know what they are talking about — and who deserve respect.

• Diana Mason and Barbara Glickstein — Healthcetera (WIOX) and formerly HealthStyles (WBAI) (New York).
• Diane Reed — Nurses Rock! (Florida) (Dr. Reed is a member of The Truth About Nursing's advisory panel).
• Joyce Batcheller — All About Nursing (Texas).
• Maureen McGrath — Sunday Night Health Show (formerly the Sunday Night Sex Show) (Vancouver, Canada).
• Josiah Jackson-Okesola — Nurses on Air (Lagos, Nigeria).
• Casey Hobbs and Shayne Mason — Nurses Talk (California).
• Leanne Meier — Once a Nurse, Always a Nurse (Minnesota).

• David Antram and Fiona Macdonald — You Wouldn't Want to Live Without Nurses (2017)

  For what is probably the best children's book about nursing that we have seen, with lots of substantive information about the history, diversity, and modern practice of the profession, and without much stereotyping.

   

Paul Krugman For publicly apologizing after calling nursing "menial" work in a 2017 New York Times blog post.
The Dr. Oz Show For publicly apologizing after depicting "nurses" as naughty physician playthings in a 2010 episode.
The View, ABC, 2015 For publicly apologizing after suggesting in an episode that nurses have no business using stethoscopes.
Lab Rats, Disney, August 5, 2013 For removing a line of dialogue telling viewers that nurse practitioners are inferior to physicians.
Scrubbing In, MTV, 2013 For taking several steps to make amends for , a "reality" show suggesting that nurses are frivolous partiers with little professional commitment.
Hooters, 2011 For discontinuing the "It's the Cure, Baby" college basketball ad campaign in which a naughty nurse prescribed food.
The Dallas Mavericks cheerleaders, 2012 For discontining the use of naughty nurse outfits in a dance routine performed with the song "Bad Case of Loving You."

 

• Worst Portrayals of Nursing in the Media 2010-2019

 

• Worst Portrayal of Nursing in a Television Series 2010-2019

Shows of Shonda Rhimes For the globally popular Grey's Anatomy (2005-present) and spinoff Private Practice (2007-2013) featuring heroic physicians provided all important care, including tasks that nurses do in real life, while nurses were at best low-skilled helpers.
Shows of David Shore  For the globally popular House (2004-2012) and The Good Doctor (2017-present) featuring hospitals staffed almost entirely by brilliant physicians, with rare appearances by nurses as anonymous lackeys.
The Mindy Project (2012-2017) — created by Mindy Kaling; Fox / Hulu. For a sitcom in which the lead character and her OB-GYN physician colleagues were quirky but expert, while the nurse characters tended to be bizarre, ignorant stooges.

Worst Game Show 2010-2019

Family Feud For a long series of survey questions that sexualize nurses. The questions express a mix of desire and fear about nurses' relations with physicians and male patients, reinforcing both the naughty nurse and battle-axe stereotypes.

Worst reporting ? Radio?

Lourdes ("Lulu") Garcia-Navarro, National Public Radio For suggesting that physicians are the only type of health professional playing any role in dealing with the mosquito-borne Zika virus.

Add to Naughty Nurse Category

Lionsgate (blood drives) For promoting its popular Saw horror film franchise with blood drives, using posters exploiting the naughty and battle-axe stereotypes of nursing. The posters push gender boundaries as a way of protesting the restrictions on blood donations by those in the LGBTQ community. But the imagery still undermines the very nurses who use the blood collected to save lives, because it presents "nurses" as exotic gender objects, some with sexual and/or unsettling elements, and most of the images can't be reconciled with an ungendered modern health profession.

Add to Nurses Advocating in the media

NNU People's World

Best example of how to work the media to promote a book on nursing

Alexandra Robbins For her huge wave of 2015 op-eds in mainstream media featuring different aspects of her book The Nurses (2015) and Our blog post The journalist promoted her 2015 book with stories in major publications, from Politico "Nurse Confessions: Don't Get Sick in July", to Slate Doctors Throw Fits to Marie Claire "Mean Girls of the ER: The Alarming Nurse Culture of Bullying and Hazing". The pieces offered valuable looks at what nurses really know and do in U.S. hospitals, although they did reflect some of the gossipy, gendered focus on "secrets" that we've seen before in mainstream media items. Op-ed "We Need More Nurses."

Worst Documentaries 2010-2019

Terence Wrong documentaries: New York Med (2012 and 2014), Boston Med (2010), NY Med: August 2014 -- This summer ABC aired the second season of Terence Wrong's documentary series NY Med, which focuses mainly on surgeons and other physicians at several New York City area hospitals. As in the first season in 2012, these eight new episodes mostly follow heroic surgeons and their patients over the course of extended treatment processes. Once again, TV personality and heart surgeon Mehmet Oz lends his star quality to several episodes. The series also features some emergency department (ED) physicians in New York and Newark, showing them to be expert and commanding. Last and least, as in 2012, the series includes occasional segments with three veteran ED nurses. They do, rarely, get chances to display health knowledge and skill, although their interludes are really more about the zany patients they encounter. This time, two of the nurses get a bit more attention when they temporarily become patients themselves, because of a heart condition and a car accident. The third nurse gets fired early on as a result of a social media fail, only to re-appear undaunted later at a different hospital. In contrast to Showtime's Nurse Jackie, a drama that depicts a fictional New York ED, Terence Wrong rarely focuses on nurses and physicians collaborating or interacting about the same patient. It is as if the brief nurse segments are light comic relief that he would not want to clutter the serious, in-depth surgical stories; those tend to ignore any nursing role in the care of profiled patients. nurseIf Mr. Wrong makes more shows like this in the future--and he has been at it since Hopkins 24/7 in 2000--we urge him to convey more of the life-saving roles that nurses play in critical care Boston Med: Tonight ABC will air the fifth episode of Boston Med, the eight-part documentary about the work and personal lives of health care workers at Massachusetts General, Brigham and Women's, and Children's hospitals. Overall, Boston Med is almost as physician-centric as producer Terence Wrong's previous "greatest hospitals" efforts Hopkins 24/7 (2000) and Hopkins (2008), focusing overwhelmingly on physicians and generally presenting them as the brilliant providers of all meaningful health care. But the new series has received an amazingly positive reaction from some reviewers and even some nurses because, along with the 16 physicians and surgeons profiled in the four episodes that have aired so far, there is one nurse! In a few scenes, this MGH nurse, Amanda Grabowski, displays technical knowledge and gives viewers some sense of nurses' roles as patient advocates and autonomous practitioners. But as the episodes go on, the show steadily forgets her clinical work, focusing instead on her social life. This approach undermines the sense of her as a serious professional, and even flirts with the stereotype that nurses are mainly about romance. The episodes do portray the personal lives of some of the physicians, but the show also continues to focus on their work as esteemed health experts. The ABC web site suggests that there will be another MGH ED nurse profiled in at least the fifth episode, Mike O'Donnell; perhaps his segment will convey something of what it is to be a man in nursing. But it's unlikely the nurse elements will have much impact alongside what will likely be profiles of some 25 physicians, especially since those profiles utterly ignore the nurses who actually provide most of the skilled care to the patients portrayed. The overall message is that physicians, especially surgeons, are the life-savers who do everything that matters. Boston Med is probably a small step forward for Terence Wrong, since the nurse profiles here may be more substantial than the fleeting nurse appearances in Hopkins two years ago. But the new series could not be compared to a documentary like Richard Khan's Nursing Diaries (2004), or even a drama like Mercy (2009-10), which feature strong, sustained portrayals of nursing skill and care

Worst advertisements, is this a duplicate category?

Kaiser radio ad May 2011 -- For this year's Nurses Week celebration, the major U.S. managed health care group Kaiser Permanente put together a 60-second radio ad. The ad certainly offers a glowing portrait of nurses, but it's also one of the most extreme and relentless presentations of angel imagery that we have ever seen. The ad doesn't just extol nurses as "noble" and "selfless." It goes on and on about their "colossal" "capacity to care," their "superhuman" "sympathy," their "heart" of "compassion," their "love," and how the self-effacing caregivers endure their exhausting, disgusting jobs (with frequent exposure to various "bodily fluids") without complaint. There is a passing reference to being "tough," but the ad also embraces the use of "nurse" to mean "breastfeeding." The angel imagery here is so strong, and so undiluted by any hint that nurses are educated professionals who save lives, that the ad might even work to undermine the claims of Kaiser's 45,000 nurses to adequate resources, persuading them that their highest aspiration is to endure the unendurable. In any case, the ad seems likely to reinforce the damaging female angel image of nursing in the minds of nurses and lay people alike. Some nurses love the ad; we guess it's hard to see what's wrong with a series of gushing compliments, especially when they play into what society has long told nurses sets them apart. But as long as nurses are defined solely by their "gargantuan heart all squishy with compassion thumping away"--yes, the ad script really says that--nurses will not get the respect or resources they need to save lives. We urge Kaiser to aim higher.

Op-eds

Matthew Walther, The Week February 26, 2019 – For the column "Why must you go to school to be a barber—or a nurse?" claiming that the "educational-industrial complex," aided and abetted by "American credentialism," is deceiving those seeking "practical" careers into thinking they need expensive educations and licenses. Walther concedes that pursuits that really are matters of "life or death," like truck-driving and dentistry, require serious training. However, Walther assures us, nurses hardly need to spend four years in what is "essentially a pre-medical school curriculum" that includes "memorizing the types of plankton in biology courses." After all, during the 1940s, we trained nurses "virtually overnight"!

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• Worst Portrayal of Nursing in Film 2010-2019

Nurse 3D (2014) Written by Douglas Aarniokoski; directed by Douglas Aarniokoski, David Loughery; Lionsgate. An erotic thriller in which an uninhibited but vengeful nurse targets apparently deceitful men for severe punishment, reinforcing the naughty-axe stereotype.
Cloud Atlas (2012) Written by David Mitchell, Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski; directed by Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski; Warner Bros. For a film that sought transcendence but also featured Nurse Noakes, a violent battle-axe who confined elderly patients and was even worse than Nurse Ratched, in part because the movie seemed to link her malevolence to her gender ambiguity.

 

• Worst Reporting on Nursing 2010-2019

Gina Kolata, New York Times For "At These Hospitals, Recovery Is Rare, but Comfort Is Not," June 23, 2014; and "Doctors Saved Lives, if Not Legs, in Boston," April 16, 2013 — health reporting that ignored nurses even when they were central to the story.

 

• Worst Efforts To Exalt Physicians at the Expense of Nurses 2010-2019

Sandeep Jauhar, The New York Times For this physician's op-eds "Nurses Are Not Doctors," April 29, 2014, and "Shouldn't Doctors Control Hospital Care?," October 10, 2017, arguing that physicians should control all health care and that NPs can't provide high-quality, cost-effective primary care on their own — despite the vast body of research showing otherwise.

 

• Most Glaring Failure to Recognize Nursing Autonomy 2010-2019

Francis Collins, Director, National Institutes of Health, 2019 For appointing a dentist as interim director of the National Institute of Nursing Research, and then, after thousands of nurses protested, appointing a biologist to replace the dentist as interim director.

 

• Worst Abuse of the Founder of Modern Nursing's Name 2010-2019

Google / Ascension – "Project Nightingale," 2019. For using the name of Florence Nightingale—a pioneer in the beneficial use of health data—for an A.I. / machine learning project that reportedly used the health data of some 50 million patients, without their knowledge, raising serious privacy concerns.
Nuance — "Florence," 2017. For naming its electronic scheduler for physicians "Florence," as if Nightingale was all about helping with physician schedules, when in fact her focus was on autonomous nursing care and spirited patient advocacy -- often in the face of opposition from physicians.

 

• Most Ignorant Attacks on School Nurses 2010-2019

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Comedy Central, October 24, 2012 For insisting that military medics with a few weeks of health care training were overqualified to do school nursing, which Stewart mocked as being about "kickball," "bruising," and "tummy aches."
Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj, Netflix, December 15, 2019 For suggesting that school nurses are not actually nurses, and that they would treat a broken hip with "apple juice and crackers."
Glee, Fox, October 3, 2013 For an episode of Ryan Murphy's show with "Nurse Penny," who had not yet gone to nursing school and who injected a student with urine instead of flu vaccine, using a needle she contaminated by practicing injection technique on a sausage.

 

• Worst Naughty Nurse Stereotyping 2010-2019

For "naughty nurse" imagery in various media worldwide, but especially these notable examples:

Mariah Carey For the 2010 "Up Out My Face" music video in which she and Nikki Minaj dressed in naughty nurse costumes.
Cardi B For a 2019 Halloween concert in which she dressed as a naughty nurse.
Klondike Kandy Bars, Unilever For a television ad featuring a sexy candy bar "nurse" whose seduction of a Klondike ice cream bar "patient" ostensibly led to the birth of the new product.
Subway For a 2014 television ad encouraging customers to dine at the sandwich chain so as to be able to fit into sexy Halloween costumes, including a naughty nurse outfit.

 

• All Out Warfare on Nurses Award 2010-2019

• Inside Amy Schumer, Comedy Central, May 20, 2014

  For a segment called "The Nurses" (a parody of The Doctors) that viciously reinforced most major anti-nurse stereotypes, including the ignorant physician handmaiden, the petty battle-axe, and the naughty nurse.

See our awards for the 2000-2009 decade here