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Press Releases
January 9, 2008 -- The Center for Nursing Advocacy is announcing its 5th Golden Lamp Awards, the annual list of the best and worst media portrayals of nurses we've seen in the past year. The 2007 list includes influential media from Hollywood shows to reports on the nursing crisis in Africa. Most of the best depictions of nursing continued to appear in the print media. Among the best were pieces in The Wall Street Journal and The Star-Ledger (Newark), and on WBUR, a Boston NPR affilliate. Among the "worst" award recipients were "Grey's Anatomy," "Private Practice," "House," Kelly Ripa, New York Times puzzle master Will Shortz, New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine, and Members of the U.K. Parliament.
The Center also recognizes nursing scholars and advocates who have made a positive impact in the general media. See the full press release or see the full awards.
Naughty nurses too scary for Halloween
October 12, 2007 -- Nurses say "naughty nurse" costumes are too spooky even for Halloween--and they're conjuring a spell to exorcise the sexy demons. The Center for Vampire Slaying Nursing Advocacy leads a torch-wielding mob urging all who make, sell, or wear the costumes to end the naughty nightmare. The group says the stereotype that nurses are sponge-bath sex zombies has bedeviled real nurses for decades. A monstrous example: the lingerie-like "nurse" costumes worn at Halloween. more...
Dentyne gets fresh with nurses
October 2, 2007 -- Hundreds of nurses have protested Cadbury Schweppes' decision to keep running a "naughty nurse" TV ad in Canada. In the ad, "nurses" give patients romantic attention the instant the patients pop the company's Dentyne Ice gum into their mouths. The gum ad's tag line is "get fresh," but the nurses say the "naughty nurse" stereotype is so stale, it's toxic. "The naughty nurse has been around for decades," said Sandy Summers, executive director of the Center for Nursing Advocacy, which launched the campaign. "And it remains an ad industry staple." more...
Nurses want "sponge bath" Kelly scrubbed
May 15, 2007 -- A nursing group wants morning TV host Kelly Ripa suspended for vowing to be co-host Regis Philbin's "sponge bath nurse" in her "little nursey costume" after his March heart surgery. see the full release...
Nurses Find Media Image Needs Intensive Care
January 10, 2007 -- The Center for Nursing Advocacy announces its fourth "Golden Lamp Awards," our annual list of the best and worst media portrayals of nurses. The 2006 list includes a range of media from all over the world. Among the "worst" award recipients were the Nobel Prize-winning Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), Italian political leader Silvio Berlusconi, nurse recruiting campaigner Johnson & Johnson, and hit Hollywood shows including ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" and Fox's "House." "Most of the best depictions of nursing appeared in the print media," said Center Executive Director Sandy Summers, who cited specific pieces in the The Philadelphia Daily News, The New Yorker, and Bangladesh's Daily Star as being among the best. Summers also praised nursing scholars and advocates who had made an impact in the general media, and many companies, including Wynn Las Vegas, drug chain CVS, and ALR Technologies, for promptly modifying damaging images in their products or ads. The Center noted that, as usual, many of the least accurate and most damaging depictions were in the influential television medium. Besides "Grey's Anatomy" and "House," the Center's "worst" list included episodes of NBC's "ER" and "Heroes," and HBO's "The Sopranos." See our press release, or our full or summary versions of the Golden Lamp Awards.
Real nurses want "naughty nurse" off menu
October 26, 2006 -- Nurses are asking an Arizona theme restaurant to change one small thing about the "naughty nurse" outfits its waitresses wear: omit the "nurse" part. The nurses argue that Tempe's Heart Attack Grill is exploiting harmful stereotypes at the worst time for their profession. The Grill, which sells "double bypass" burgers, boasts that its food is "worth dying for." But that's a result the nurses say really will become more likely if they cannot overcome nursing's status as the most sexually-fantasized-about job on the planet and resolve the worst shortage in its history. "The 'naughty nurse' isn't going to save your life when you need her to," said Sandy Summers, RN, MSN, MPH, Executive Director of the Center for Nursing Advocacy, which works to improve public understanding of nursing. "And I think the Heart Attack Grill could clog just as many arteries if it altered its naughty nurse uniforms to be just, well, naughty." see the full press release...
Open letter from nurses to the American Medical Association
September 28, 2006 --
Dear Dr. Rebecca Patchin and the AMA Board of Trustees:
I am writing to urge you to rectify the damaging distortions about nurse practitioners (NPs) propounded recently by Dr. Rebecca Patchin in high-profile media pieces about retail store "quick clinics." Dr. Patchin has exploited her status as a "former nurse" to buttress unfounded attacks on the training and care of NPs. In particular, Dr. Patchin has claimed that physicians receive five more years of education than NPs, which is misleading at best, and suggested that NPs do not know enough to effectively diagnose or treat patients, which is plainly false. see the full letter...
August 23, 2006 -- Nursing advocates are asking celebrities from Hollywood hospital shows to donate their "swag" from Sunday's Primetime Emmy Awards to schools and charities working to ease the global nursing crisis. The Center for Nursing Advocacy says that shows like ABC's "Grey's Anatomy" and Fox's "House," both nominated for Best Drama, have profited by presenting viewers worldwide with a vision of hospital care that grossly undervalues nursing. "On these shows, physicians are often shown doing important work that nurses really do, while the few nurses are usually pathetic handmaidens," said Center executive director Sandy Summers. "Research shows that entertainment television affects how the public views nursing. Because most people don't understand what nurses really do to save and improve lives, nursing doesn't get the funding or respect it needs, and the shortage gets worse. We think those responsible for these shows should help undo the damage." more...
April 21, 2006 -- White Stripes leader Jack White has just given the leader of an international nursing group a "Metaphorical Ignorance Award," complete with a signed certificate. The alternative rock icon issued the "Award" for "outstanding inability to recognize metaphor," after the Baltimore-based Center for Nursing Advocacy gave his band one of its annual Golden Lamp Awards, for creating one of the worst media portrayals of nursing in 2005. The "award-winning" song was "The Nurse," written by White, from the Grammy-winning album "Get Behind Me Satan." more...
Heroes, Whores and Handmaidens: 3rd Annual Golden Lamp Awards Rank Best and Worst Media Portrayals of Nursing in 2005.
Awards featured on Jeopardy! and in the January issue of the
American Journal of Nursing
Baltimore, MD, December 27, 2005 -- The Center for Nursing Advocacy and the American Journal of Nursing announce this year's annual list of the best and worst media portrayals of nurses. Media recognized by the "Golden Lamp Awards" include such well-known television hits as ABC's "Grey's Anatomy," singled out for especially poor performance. The Golden Lamp Awards highlight media portrayals from around the world that the Center believes deserve attention, for better or worse. See the full press release or go straight to the awards in full or summary version.
Nurses convince Gillette to pull "lusty-nurse fever" TV ad
October 4, 2005 -- Yesterday the Gillette Company agreed to pull a television ad for TAG Body Spray, in response to a Center for Nursing Advocacy campaign. The ad featured a provocatively dressed "nurse" who developed "highly contagious lusty-nurse fever" because of the product and climbed into bed with the stunned male patient wearing it. See the full press release and the ad.
Nurses and physicians protest medical students' raunchy "Nurses' Song"
July 17, 2005 -- More than 500 nurses and physicians across Canada, the United States and overseas have written to object to the lyrics of a song performed by some University of Alberta medical students at their recent "MedShow," a traditionally irreverent annual event. The "Nurses' Song," sung to the tune of a song from "Jesus Christ Superstar," stated that nurses were "whores" and "bitches" whose "incompetence" threatened to "make our patients die," but that they were qualified to "fill up my coffeepot" and "give good head." The refrain urged nurses to "show me those boobs." See the full press release.
Landmark JAMA study finds nurses to be autonomous, skilled; nation reels
April 1, 2005 -- Registered nurses are autonomous professionals with years of college-level training, and their clinical skills are critical to patient outcomes, according to researchers writing in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association. The massive study "Nursing: Who Knew?" was based on extensive research by physicians at the Harvard and Johns Hopkins medical schools. For the "Who Knew?" project, 
physicians did field work in hospital locations ranging from so-called "nurses' stations" to the more rarely seen "patients' rooms." They also conducted the first detailed interviews with the recently discovered "nursing scholars" and "nurse practitioners." Among the key findings were that nursing was a distinct science, that many nurses had graduate degrees in nursing, that most nurses had no particular wish to be or to date physicians, and that nurses performed critical health tasks long thought to be the sole province of physicians. more...
Nurses urge corporate giants to divest from NBC's "ER"
March 24, 2005 -- The Center for Nursing Advocacy has launched a campaign asking 23 major corporate sponsors of the NBC/Warner television drama "ER" to
refrain from placing further advertising on the popular show worldwide until it dramatically improves its portrayal of nurses. more...
December 28, 2004 -- The Center for Nursing 
Advocacy has issued its list of the best and worst media portrayals of the nursing profession that it has seen during 2004. The list highlights a variety of depictions of nursing--from television to the print media, from Dallas to South Africa--that the Center believes deserve recognition, for better or worse. more...
Nurses urge U.S. to change name of "Doctor Day" campaign
December 17, 2004 -- Last week the Center for Nursing Advocacy launched a campaign to persuade the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to change the name of its annual "Take a Loved One to the Doctor Day" campaign to one that would not exclude Advanced Practice Registered Nurses (APRNs), who provide vital primary care to the very minorities the campaign targets. The nurses' campaign has been joined by prominent nursing groups including the American Nurses Association, American College of Nurse-Midwives, American Academy of Nurse Practitioners and the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists. Nurses have already sent more than 200 letters to HHS and prominent urban radio figure Tom Joyner, who serves as honorary chair of the HHS campaign. more...
Nurses tell Dr. Phil to "get real"
November 24, 2004 -- Hundreds of nurses have already written letters of protest to Dr. Phil McGraw, as part of a campaign announced yesterday by the Center for Nursing Advocacy, following on air comments by the popular talk show host that he had seen "lots of cute little nurses go after doctors, because they're going to seduce and marry them a doctor, because that's their ticket out of having to work as a nurse." more...
Nurses decry Skechers ad campaign featuring Christina Aguilera as dominatrix nurse
August 9, 2004 -- The Center for Nursing Advocacy has launched a campaign to protest a new global ad campaign by shoemaker Skechers that features pop star Christina Aguilera as a "naughty and nice" nurse, and over 600 nurses have written to protest the ad in the campaign's first few days.
The ad, which shows Ms. Aguilera in a sexually suggestive dominatrix outfit confronting a patient in a hospital bed, reinforces stereotypes that nurses are sexually available and abusive to their patients, at a time when the global nursing shortage is a major public health threat. The Center understands that the ad will be seen in magazines and retail locations all over the world. more...
Nursing group ranks best and worst media portrayals of nursing for 2003
December 31, 2003 -- The Center for Nursing Advocacy has issued its list of the best and worst media portrayals of nursing during 2003. The list highlights a variety of depictions of nursing--from television to the print media, from fiction to news, and from Milwaukee to Malaysia--that the Center believes deserve recognition, for better or worse. more...
Nurses find orangutan "nurse" on NBC's "Passions" less than precious
December 16, 2003 -- The Center for Nursing Advocacy has launched a campaign to protest the use of an orangutan to play a character called "Nurse Precious" on the NBC soap opera "Passions." Since March 2003, the campy daytime drama has featured the monkey in the role of a private duty nurse of one of its characters--a bold step backward in the already slow evolution of the media's treatment of nurses. more...
Nurses say NBC's "ER" contributes to nursing shortage
November 10, 2003 -- Baltimore, MD -- The Center for Nursing Advocacy has kicked off a major campaign to convince NBC's popular television drama "ER" to portray the nursing profession accurately, in response to long-standing misrepresentations that the Center believes are contributing to the nursing shortage, one of the nation's most critical public health problems. more...
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