Nursing Stereotypes Essay

1380 Words6 Pages
Case Study #1

The image of nursing is now centuries in the making, giving us a long history of mental pictures from Florence Nightingale to Edith Cavell to more recent images of Hot Lips Hoolihan and Nurse Ratched. Some of the more recent media images have portrayed naughty nurse images with multiple negative stereotypes associated with nursing. The majority of people view these negative images and unfortunately that will be the picture most retain. Even though these multiple misconceived images abound, nurses continue to be quite invisible in the media, compared to other cultural groups. “ The Woodhull Study on Nursing and the Media, conducted by Sigma Theta Tau International, found that nurses were severely under-represented in print media, including in comprehensive coverage of health care. Of 1,153 health care stories in 16 major newspapers, only 11 carried references to nurses. Rarely do people hear about their on-the-spot critical, “life or death” thinking, or their heroic efforts to provide accountable, complex, quality health interventions in the midst of chaos and crisis.” (1) It’s nice to know that we are held in high regard by the public for our honesty and ethical standards, but this does little to promote the knowledge that nurses are expert clinicians. The image of nursing is vital to our profession’s continued growth and advancement in today’s changing workplace and an important concept for the public and future nurses to be aware of.
According to a study done by Johnson and Johnson, “ only one half of Americans know the educational levels of nursing, fewer than 1 in 5 know R.N.’s must be licensed, less than 20% know that R.N.’s must have continual ongoing education, more than 2 in 3 don’t know that N.P.’s are allowed to prescribe drugs, and fewer than 4 in 10 know that nurses are involved in decreasing health care costs, work in
Open Document