December 2019 — The Truth About Nursing

Inventing justice

Posted on December 31, 2019February 17, 2020 by Sandy Summers and Harry Jacobs Summers

Recipient of a Recipient of a Best Coverage of Nurse Innovators 2010-2019 Award UMass nursing professor promotes health innovation—and nursing A Forbes piece by Stephen Key spotlights three award-winning female inventors, including…

26,118 total views

Because stereotypes

Posted on December 13, 2019December 28, 2019 by Sandy Summers and Harry Jacobs Summers

Grey’s Anatomy offers a good nursing portrayal…for 30 seconds The ABC hospital drama has aired 350 episodes telling the world that only surgeons matter and nurses are clinical clutter, as we show…

26,326 total views, 2 views today

She’s too good for you

Posted on December 13, 2019December 25, 2019 by Sandy Summers and Harry Jacobs Summers

Grey’s Anatomy is a little bit sorry about that “skanky syph nurse” thing In the ABC show’s 14th season, Nurse Olivia returned with some verbal payback for surgeon Alex Karev. But the…

25,511 total views, 4 views today

This is scut

Posted on December 13, 2019January 13, 2021 by Sandy Summers and Harry Jacobs Summers

On Grey’s Anatomy, only a few handmaidens can hope to reach battle-axe status Nurses in the show’s 13th season were mostly meek servants taking physician orders, when they appeared at all. One…

17,813 total views, 4 views today

Wondering how long

Posted on December 13, 2019December 25, 2019 by Sandy Summers and Harry Jacobs Summers

More physician nursing in season 12 of Grey’s Anatomy The season was especially physician-centric, with surgeons doing everything that mattered in the hospital: triaging, diagnosing, treating, monitoring, intervening, advocating, educating. Nurses were…

16,592 total views, 2 views today

A quiet place

Posted on December 9, 2019February 11, 2020 by Sandy Summers and Harry Jacobs Summers

Nurses remain silent and submissive on 15th straight season of Grey’s Anatomy The ABC drama continued to offer a vision of hospital care in which surgeons did everything that mattered, at one…

16,499 total views

Sex candy
Yahoo report on naughty nurse Halloween costumes relies on Truth director and advisorRead More »
Buckets and Dollies
More good portrayals of nursing are coming on the BBC’s Call the Midwife and Netflix’s Virgin River. On the new Ordinary Joe (NBC), a nurse is one of the lead character’s three alternative personas. But Bob Hearts Abishola (CBS) will return with a nurse who decided last season that high …Read More »
Orchids
CNET reported that the Doodle marked the start of National Hispanic Heritage Month. Its piece also noted that the Panamanian-American nursing pioneer stressed cultural awareness in care, founded the National Association of Hispanic Nurses, and became the first Hispanic nursing dean at New York University.Read More »
Nurses Make America Great
The sitcom’s first season (2019-20) focused on the relationship between the Nigerian-born nurse Abishola and Bob, the head of a small Detroit sock company. Culture clash was the main theme, but Abishola was also shown to be a tough, skilled patient advocate, notably in helping Bob’s mother recover from a …Read More »
Cancel that culture
Robert Pearl's piece argues that physicians undermine health by focusing on lucrative short-term interventions rather than primary and preventive care. But the piece itself reflects a culture that ignores the key role of nurses, who have long had the same holistic practice model that Pearl favors.Read More »
We belong together
News reports by Reuters and others have described strong public protests during early 2019 by Portuguese nurses seeking better pay and working conditions. One union leader even staged a short hunger strike! And in April the New York Times reported that three major New York hospital systems had avoided a …Read More »
The Marvelous Messrs. Mayo
Ken Burns’ two-hour film The Mayo Clinic: Faith – Hope – Science makes a strong case for Mayo physician achievements, highlighting their innovative treatments and progressive financing. But it mainly portrays nurses as good-hearted assistants who couldn’t hope to do as much for patients as the nuns who co-founded the Clinic.Read More »
OnlyNurseFans
An October 2020 Buzzfeed piece reported that some nursing students had turned to sex work on the OnlyFans website to survive during the Covid-19 era. But the report failed to clearly explain its nursing focus, or whether there is any reason to think those in nursing are disproportionately taking this …Read More »
Wishful acting
The May 2021 piece had some strong advocacy from National Nurses United, which argues that it’s too soon to tell vaccinated people they can stop wearing masks in most U.S. settings. Sadly, the article includes more about how the new guidance is playing out in California politics than it does …Read More »
Communication breakdown
A September 2018 piece in U.S. News & World Report does a generally good job of addressing the problem of poor communication between the professions, exploring some key causes and promising solutions. It relies on two experienced nurses who make many excellent points, although some comments from one of them …Read More »
Just pick anybody up off the street and turn them into nurses
In March 2021 Dame Donna Kinnair, leader of the UK’s Royal College of Nursing, appeared on the BBC radio show Newshour to discuss nursing during the Covid-19 era. Dame Kinnair made good points about the value of UK nurses’ work, the poor public understanding of their roles, and the inadequate …Read More »
Running the show
New York Times opinion items show the value of nursing—and how it is threatened In late February 2021, two nurse-related opinion pieces appeared in the Times almost at the same time. A...Read More »
Macho macho man
A strong 2018 item in The Economist discussed the stereotypes that still deter men from nursing, even at a time of critical global shortage. And an NPR report from a few months later offered valuable social science insights that the problem has roots in pervasive male anxiety about manhood. But …Read More »
Absolute beginners
The show began airing in the U.S. in December 2020. It has five main characters, and all are new hospital nurses. Each one shows real health knowledge and operates with some autonomy—but not when physicians are present. And without an expert, authoritative major nurse character, Nurses seems to be a …Read More »
She may destroy you
Since mid-2020, Boston nurse practitioner Christina Kim has been posting strong refutations of Covid misinformation on TikTok, as reported in a good Wired piece in September. Kim’s video style is comic, hyper-articulate, and at times brutal; it may not be for everyone. But her TikTok account presents an image of …Read More »
An army of traveling nurses
As 2020 ends, coverage of nursing in Covid care still depends on who is involved. A recent NBC News piece offered a good quick look at the travel nurses who are trying to cope with the current U.S. surge. In a BBC Newshour report, an NYU physician forcefully affirmed the …Read More »
Essential workers
Nurse added to Biden-Harris Covid-19 task force In late November 2020, the Biden-Harris transition team added a nurse to its Covid advisory board, after campaigns by the Truth About Nursing and others....Read More »
Task force multipliers
On November 22, 2020, the Truth About Nursing sent the Covid task force a message with a diverse list of nurses. The list included direct care nurses, as well as nurses who are expert in infection control, health disparities, and other public health disciplines. We hope our message will increase …Read More »
The Truth About Nursing’s letter to the Biden-Harris Covid-19 advisory panel
November 22, 2020 Thank you for your openness to representation of nurses on the Biden-Harris coronavirus advisory panel. Nurses deliver most skilled health care and have valuable insight into what patients and...Read More »
Which nurses would be the best fit for the Biden-Harris Covid-19 advisory panel?
November 12, 2020 -- Thank you to the many hundreds of people who have joined our letter-writing campaign and urged President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris to add nurses to their Covid-19 task force. One of the current advisory panel members got in touch with us yesterday to let …Read More »
The incoming Administration’s new Covid-19 task force excludes nurses
November 11, 2020 -- President-elect Joe Biden and Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris have now announced the names of the 13 members of their new Covid-19 task force. The panel is mostly physicians and includes no nurses. But nurses provide the vast majority of the skilled care that Covid-19 patients receive, and …Read More »
Hundreds of people suffocating to death
In October 2020 CNN reported on a widely-shared TikTok video in which nurse Cristina Hops expressed outrage at a tweet by Donald Trump urging people not to “be afraid of Covid.” Hops argued that the tweet undermined the efforts of health workers to get the public to take the deadly …Read More »
Raising Cain
The fourth season of the hospital drama, which aired in summer 2017, still included the competent emergency nurse Kenny. But as always, every other major character was a physician. And even more than in the past, the show portrayed nurses as mere assistants to the physicians, with limited skills and …Read More »
Nurses may be useful in triage, say non-nurses
A September 2018 piece in the Post says a new program in which nurses triage 911 calls has helped some patients get better access to care, although it has not yet greatly reduced needless ambulance trips. Sadly, despite plenty of commentary from D.C. emergency services personnel, the piece fails to …Read More »
PSYCHOTHERAPY
In October 2020 VICE reported that after a Korean health union complained, YG Entertainment agreed to remove several images in the video for BLACKPINK’s “Lovesick Girls” in which group member Jennie had appeared in a quasi-naughty nurse outfit. The images could have been worse, but as the union rightly noted, …Read More »

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