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….
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 understanding of nursing. While we can’t guarantee nurses will be added to the task force, we are hopeful, and we thank you for your recommendations!
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…
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 us know our concerns have been heard and they are eager to put forward our suggestions for the best nurse candidates for the panel.
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 they have deep understanding of how the crisis is playing out on the ground. Nurses also have diverse public health and policy expertise, including in the fields of infection control, health disparities, and community health. Nurses know and do a great deal that physicians do not. So with nurses, the panel will be far more effective. Please join us in urging that nurses be added!
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 disease seriously. That is strong patient advocacy.
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 no autonomy—especially in an egregious plotline in which a seemingly gifted nurse turned out to be a physician.
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 quote or even name a single nurse.
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, sexual abuse remains a serious problem for modern nurses.
Is the truth out there?
Netflix’s School Nurse Files presents a nurse as quirky paranormal protector As part of Netflix’s apparent effort to present nurse characters who are as different from each other as possible, school nurse…
The old front line
The July 2020 issue honored those on the “new front line.” One cover featured a midwife. And inside, that nurse advocated for more NHS funding. But nurses are not the “new” front line—they have been saving lives for a long time! Yet the editor’s essay did not group them with physicians, the recognized health experts, but with workers who are not in health care at all.
Nurse beyond borders
Netflix romantic drama Virgin River features skilled advanced practice nurse The new series features APRN Melinda Monroe, who flees L.A. to join the solo practice of a senior physician in northern California….
“Why are they allowed to do it just because I am a nurse?”
Recent press items highlight the violence U.S. hospital nurses face today The Atlantic posted a piece in December 2016 on the growing threats from nurses’ patients, and the inadequate support from legislators…
“Save one life, you’re a hero. Save a hundred lives, well then you’re a nurse.”
Nursing will be back to prime time. The big news is Netflix’s release of Ratched, but the streaming giant will also offer more of the actually-pretty-good portrayal of nursing on romantic drama Virgin River. And it seems there will always be the BBC’s Call the Midwife, with its strong portrayals of nursing. But on the new show Transplant, about a refugee trauma physician, nurses are peripheral helpers. And otherwise, the landscape will be dominated by other physician-centric dramas, ranging from Chicago Med, which has several skilled nurses, to Grey’s Anatomy, which never has.
Paging Dr. Zenk
In July 2020 the National Institutes of Health announced that Shannon Zenk, RN, PhD, would assume the role of director of the National Institute of Nursing Research in fall 2020. Since August 2019, NINR has been without a nurse director, with that role being filled on an interim basis by a dentist and then a biologist. Last year the Truth, joined by many nurses, urged NIH to appoint a nurse as interim director. In any case, we congratulate Dr. Zenk on her appointment.
The Action Figures
An engaging Vox video argues that men should overcome regressive gender notions and enter nursing, which it calls the “robot-proof” “job of the future.” But the video itself reinforces the gendered angel stereotype that nursing is all about “caring and empathy,” ignoring the advanced scientific skills and critical judgments that modern nursing requires.
Working nurses to death
Jason Silverstein posted a strong report showing that the widespread understaffing of U.S. nurses costs lives and burns out nurses. Commendably, the piece relied solely on nursing scholars and nursing research to make its points. It might have also explained how nurses save lives and addressed potential solutions to the problem.
She’s here
Creator Ryan Murphy describes the new show, about the iconic battle-axe nurse from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, as “an imagining of how this monster was created.” We have long feared the series will reinforce the harmful stereotyping of the original, which linked female nursing authority with malevolence. Will Ratched give viewers a sense that nurses are anything more than disturbed clinical abusers?
“Looking for empathy in medicine? Start with nurses”
After a June 2020 piece in the Baltimore Sun marvels at medical students providing holistic care to Covid patients, a local nurse explains that this extraordinary care innovation has actually been at the core…
Hot
NY Post: Covid nurse suspended for wearing little beneath clear gown Post pieces reported that a Russian nurse had been suspended for wearing only her underwear, or maybe it was a swimsuit, under her…