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3rd Annual Golden Lamp Awards Rank Best and Worst Media Portrayals of Nursing in 2005
The nursing profession is honoring their own version of winners and losers in the category of public portrayal as Hollywood continues to hold award shows night after night. The Center for Nursing Advocacy has announced their 2005 Golden Lamp Awards list in their 3rd Annual who’s who of nursing interpretation. The list contains this year's best and worst portrayals of the nursing industry.
Recognized depictions included every type of media, worldwide - from print to television. And in today's society it's no secret that we are heavily influenced by what we see and hear, especially when it comes to healthcare. Research shows that the news and entertainment media greatly affect public views and actions, so improving nursing's media image is a critical step in resolving the nursing shortage that continues to plague the world.
According to the Center's press release, they identified several patterns in this year's list. "Most of the best depictions of nursing appeared in the print press," said Center Executive Director Sandy Summers, who cited work by journalist Suzanne Gordon and the Boston Globe as exceptional. Summers also praised the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for changing the name of its annual minority health campaign from "Take a Loved One to the Doctor Day" to "Take a Loved One for a Check-Up Day" in order not to exclude nurses.
Summers noted that nurses themselves created some of the best accounts of nursing, or as well as journalists who consulted nursing experts. “This points to the importance of nurses speaking out strongly and frequently about their profession.” She added that this year the Center has seen an impressive number of nurses across the world advocating in the media for their patients and themselves.
Top FIVE Best Media Portrayals of Nursing
Suzanne Gordon, Journalist and Nursing Advocate. Book: Nursing Against the Odds: How Health Care Cost-Cutting, Media Stereotypes, and Medical Hubris Undermine Nursing and Patient Care, April 2005. Newspaper op-ed pieces: "Nurse understaffing harms patients," Boston Globe, May 12, 2005; "Micromanaging healthcare," Boston Globe, Aug. 31, 2005; "America's shortage of nurses gets no help from Hollywood," San Jose Mercury News, Sept. 28, 2005. Suzanne Gordon's comprehensive book is a searing indictment of the denursification of developed world health care and the associated nursing shortage. Her frequent op-ed pieces in major metropolitan newspapers tell the public what nurses can really do to save lives and improve patient outcomes, and they present compelling arguments for policy changes to help nurses do it. Ms. Gordon serves on the Center's advisory panel.
“Critical Care: The Making of an ICU Nurse,” Scott Allen (reporting), Michele McDonald (photographs),Boston Globe, October 23-26, 2005. Award shared with Georgia Peirce of Massachusetts General Hospital, who persuaded the Globe to do this chronicle of the eight-month training of a new intensive care nurse by a relentless 20-year veteran. The piece shows the primacy of nursing care for ICU patients, and reveals the extent to which resident physicians rely on nurses' expertise. The four-part series also gives readers an unusually vivid sense of the complexity and importance of highly skilled nursing in a major hospital, with some indication of the stress the nursing crisis has put on critical health systems.
“Number of Philippine Nurses Emigrating Skyrockets” Michael Sullivan, Morning Edition, National Public Radio, Feb. 3, 2005. This comprehensive piece explains the devastating effects of the nursing shortage on the health systems of developing nations whose nurses are leaving to fill positions in more developed nations, where they can earn salaries many times higher. The balanced report makes clear that there are no easy answers; the Philippines relies on foreign remittances, yet it is now losing 15,000 nurses each year. The piece includes clips from a hospital nursing executive, government officials, and an emigrating nurse, who explains her decision with a reference to "the future of my kids."
All nurses worldwide who advocate through the media for better health. They include:
A dozen Peruvian public sector union nurses, who went on an extended hunger strike in a church as part of a successful national strike for better wages (Latina Prensa, Sept. 14, 2005; Monsters and Critics, Sept. 19, 2005);
The Royal College of Nursing (U.K.), which spoke out forcefully on global health and poverty (Daily Mail, June 24, 2005), childhood obesity (The Times, July 17, 2005), and a public smoking ban (Daily Mail, Sept. 4, 2005);
The California Nurses Association, which used media tools to defeat efforts to weaken the state’s nurse staffing law (Associated Press/CNN, Feb. 22, 2005; The Washington Post, Nov. 11, 2005);
The New Zealand Nurses Organization, which placed cardboard cut-out nurses called "Mia" ("missing in action") on units it considered to be short staffed as part of a large public campaign on staffing reform (Stuff, Sept. 22, 2005);
The Massachusetts Nurses Association, which turned a local TV affiliate’s report on medication errors into an infomercial for safe staffing legislation (CBS4 Boston, Mar. 14, 2005);
The Australian Nurses Federation, which used public pressure to end major retailer Bras 'n Things' advertising for "naughty nurse" lingerie (Herald Sun, Jan. 5, 2005);
Nancy King Reame, who hosted "Pregnancy and Newborn Plus," a new iVillage video series for pregnant women and new mothers (June 2005);
Nurses who wrote op-ed pieces, including:
Mary Nash ("Staffing for safer hospitals,"The Kansas City Star, Apr. 15, 2005),
Gail Stuart ("Nursing shortage hits health, economy,"Post and Courier (Charleston, SC), May 13, 2005), and
Teri Mills ("America's Nurse,"The New York Times, May 20, 2005);
Nurses who wrote letters to the editor, including:
Heather Bolecz (The Vancouver Sun, Apr. 28, 2005),
Julie McMahon Falk (Outside, May 2005), and
Lyn Button (Wawatay News, May 19, 2005); and
Diana Mason and Barbara Glickstein, whose long-running radio show HealthStyles addressed key health issues each week, often featuring nurse experts, on New York station WBAI. Dr. Mason serves on the Center's advisory pane
All “Aging and Infirmity Are Twinned No Longer,” Jane Brody, The New York Times, Jan. 25, 2005. This personal health column relies heavily on a recent American Journal of Nursing by the University of South Carolina College of Nursing’s Elaine J. Amella, RN, PhD, to address key issues people face as they age. The column stresses that many of the physical and mental problems commonly associated with aging are in fact preventable and/or treatable, and it is full of practical information for our rapidly aging population. The piece is an excellent example of journalistic reliance on nursing expertise.
Top FIVE Worst Media Portrayals of Nursing
Six episodes of "Grey's Anatomy": "A Hard Day's Night," written by Shonda Rhimes, Mar. 27, 2005; "The First Cut Is the Deepest," written by Shonda Rhimes, Apr. 3, 2005; "Winning a Battle, Losing the War," written by Shonda Rhimes, Apr. 10, 2005; "If Tomorrow Never Comes," written by Krista Vernoff, May 1, 2005; "Bring the Pain," written by Shonda Rhimes, Oct. 23, 2005; "Something to Talk About," written by Stacy McKee, Nov. 6, 2005; Executive Producers Shonda Rhimes, Mark Gordon, Betsy Beers, Jim Parriott, ABC. "What did you just say? Did you just call me a nurse?" ""I didn't get stuck with someone this clueless, and that was, like, a nurse." "You're the pig who called Meredith a nurse...I hate you on principle." "You should reprimand him...make him change bedpans." "Three saucy, bad, naughty nurses. And they were taking a shower. ... And then this doctor walks in and he sees these three naughty bad nurses with these great big..." What more can we say? "Grey's Anatomy" does not just ignore nursing, depict nurses as fawning or bitter losers with no significant role in hospital care, or have its nine physician characters spend half their time doing key care tasks that nurses really do. Shonda Rhimes's show also makes a point of attacking the profession, relentlessly. The very embodiment of superficial, "dress for success" feminism, this huge prime time hit has perhaps shown more express contempt for nursing than any other show in U.S. television history.
Five episodes of "House": "Three Stories," written by David Shore, May 17, 2005; "The Honeymoon," written by Lawrence Kaplow & John Mankiewicz, May 24, 2005; "Daddy's Boy," written by Thomas L. Moran, Nov. 8, 2005; "Spin," written by Sara Hess, Nov. 15, 2005; "The Mistake," written by Peter Blake, Nov. 29, 2005; Executive Producers David Shore, Paul Attanasio, Katie Jacobs, and Bryan Singer, Fox. "House" is addicted to physician nursing. The hit show's six brilliant physician characters constantly do key care tasks that nurses do in real life. The rare nurse characters tend to be silent, barely visible clerks, like wallpaper that assumes human form to move or hold objects. Although the show has mostly pretended that nurses do not exist, recent episodes indicate that its physician heroes consider nurses to be unskilled clean-up staff, "nurse-maids" who are good for handling stool and patients who have fallen down.
Two episodes of "Inconceivable": "Pilot," Sept. 23, 2005, and "Secrets and Thighs," Sept. 30, 2005, both written by Oliver Goldstick and Marco Pennette; Executive Producers Oliver Goldstick, Marco Pennette, Mike Tollin, Brian Robbins, Joe Davola, NBC. This short-lived fertility clinic drama presented one of the worst images of nursing to hit prime time in years. While smart physicians did the moving and shaking, the shallow major nurse character seduced the lead male physician, clung as he pulled away, then betrayed him in a way that was both insidious and pathetic. Other nurses discussed lunch and vacation plans, and commented that a man who had chosen one of the clinic's naughty nurse porn movies to help him produce a sperm sample would take awhile, as he had chosen one with "a plot." (Maybe he should have just watched "Inconceivable.") If viewers had no reason to regard nurses as unskilled twits or sexually degraded, drug-abusing vixens before watching this show, they sure do now.
Three episodes of "ER": "Middleman," written by Lisa Zwerling, MD, Feb. 3, 2005; "Alone in a Crowd," written by Dee Johnson, Feb. 17, 2005; "Ruby Redux," written by Lydia Woodward and Lisa Zwerling, MD, Apr. 28; Executive Producers John Wells, Michael Crichton, MD, Christopher Chulack, Dee Johnson, NBC. Several episodes of this veteran hospital drama illustrated why the show--despite some serious efforts to show respect for nursing--has probably been the world's most influential purveyor of the handmaiden image of nursing. The keys to "ER"'s enormous influence are its popularity, its overall dramatic quality, and its apparent realism. These episodes featured a compelling (though inaccurate) endorsement of physician dominance in hospital care; an association of nursing with invasive or unpleasant procedures, while physicians directed all the obviously key treatment; and a scene in which nurse Abby Lockhart, now practicing as a physician, addresses a patient's dismissive reference to her as a nurse by saying indignantly: "I am not a nurse. I'm a doctor."
Two episodes of "Scrubs": "My Ocardial Infarction," written by Mark Stegemann, Jan. 18, 2005, and "My Quarantine," written by Tad Quill, Feb. 8, 2005; Executive Producer Bill Lawrence, NBC. Despite a few past plotlines that had surprisingly thoughtful takes on nursing issues, on the whole this sitcom continues to reflect the prevailing Hollywood vision of nurses as peripheral health workers with limited skills who report to physicians. These two episodes have scenes in which nurses are wide-eyed subordinates whose job during codes is to call out a vital sign or two, then wait for heroic, all-knowing physicians to issue commands and save the day; an attending facetiously associates nursing with "special sponge baths" and "happy endings;" and a surgical resident affirms that "any idiot can be a nurse." The nurse to whom this surgeon is married disagrees, but we never see why, suggesting that he's rude, but maybe he's basically right.
To read the entire list of Golden Lamp Awards and to find out more about the individual winners and losers mentioned above, click here.
