patient advocacy Archives — The Truth About Nursing

“Patients die because nurses are too busy”

Posted on June 27, 2020October 27, 2020 by Sandy and Harry Summers

Press items report deadly nursing shortage on both sides of the Atlantic A study of European hospitals shows that missed care due to nurse understaffing has increased death rates, according to an…

154,292 total views, 4 views today

A very determined nurse practitioner

Posted on June 27, 2020October 27, 2020 by Sandy and Harry Summers

The Resident features a skilled nurse advocate The Fox hospital drama’s first season highlighted some real problems in the U.S. health care system, including corruption and harmful errors. But the show also…

130,554 total views, 2 views today

Impressive

Posted on March 18, 2020March 18, 2020 by Sandy and Harry Summers

Hawaii Five-0 episode features strong, skilled nurse character A 2017 episode of the CBS show’s reboot series is about Five-0’s efforts to protect a comatose witness from heavily armed killers. The witness’s…

48,877 total views, 2 views today

Outrageous

Posted on January 24, 2020February 17, 2020 by Sandy and Harry Summers

Ontario nurses urge resistant city leaders to equip police with naloxone Recipient of a Best Public Health Advocacy by Nurses 2010-2019 Award The Windsor Star ran a good report about the persistent…

27,774 total views, 8 views today

The Wonder (2016)

Posted on June 19, 2019October 29, 2019 by Sandy and Harry Summers

Emma DonoghueBack Bay Books / Little, Brown and Company God is a woman Emma Donoghue’s The Wonder puts a Nightingale nurse to the test The novel tells the story of 19th Century…

1,247 total views

Student suspended for saving friend’s life

Posted on February 28, 2016February 6, 2020 by Sandy and Harry Summers

15-year-old Texas student helps school nurse save asthmatic classmate’s life, then is suspended for doing so February 29, 2016 — Last month, Houston NBC TV affiliate KCEN reported that a Killeen high…

1,447 total views, 2 views today

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 »
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...Read More »
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 …Read More »
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....Read More »
“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...Read More »
“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 …Read More »
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 …Read More »
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 …Read More »
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 …Read More »

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