The Power of Myth:
How the Media-Fueled Undervaluation of Nursing Wastes Health Care Resources and Takes Lives 

The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie -- deliberate, contrived and dishonest -- but the myth -- persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Belief in myths allows the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.

John F. Kennedy

The nursing shortage is a public health crisis and a severe drain on hospital operations. Sandy Summers, RN, MSN, MPH, Executive Director of the Center for Nursing Advocacy will explore some overlooked roots of the nursing crisis and offer strategies to help nurses respond. By reconsidering how our society thinks and acts toward nursing, we can increase efficiency, reduce turnover, improve care technologies, and enhance community satisfaction.

Media products have long shaped and reinforced inaccurate perceptions about the nature of nursing work. Public health research shows that even entertainment media products have a significant effect on how people think and act with regard to health care. But today too few decision-makers, from government to the public at large, know that nurses are skilled professionals who save lives and improve outcomes. Resources flow accordingly.

The media commonly presents nurses as handmaidens, sex objects, angels, or battleaxes. Advanced practice nurses are often ignored, or portrayed as cut-rate physician substitutes, even though studies show their care is at least as good. While there are exceptions, the most influential media rarely conveys the importance of nursing. Indeed, the media often not only fails to portray nursing accurately, but depicts physicians doing nurses' work.

Such depictions suggest to the public that physicians are the only health care professionals whose work matters, and that nurses lack substantive knowledge and autonomy. They discourage talented, self-respecting people, especially men, from entering the profession, legitimize the dilution of nursing care delivery with under-educated technicians, demoralize practicing nurses and legitimize the chronic under-funding of nursing education, research and clinical practice. These are all factors in the nursing shortage that is taking lives worldwide. For the shortage to end and public health to improve, we must increase the public's understanding of nursing, and only nurses can make that happen. Sandy Summers will explore strategies to help nurses reach out to the media, including through the Center's web site, in order to move the image of nursing toward that of a profession that's second to none.

Speaker: Sandy Summers, RN, MSN, MPH
Executive Director
The Center for Nursing Advocacy
203 Churchwardens Rd.
Baltimore, MD USA 21212-2937
office 410-323-1100
fax 443-705-0260
cell 443-253-3738
ssummers@nursingadvocacy.org
www.nursingadvocacy.org

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