And what are we going to do about it?
We’ve all seen the stories in print or watched the video clips:
- In a story about a hospital’s response to a disaster, the hospital administrator and/or a physician describe the actions of the staff, while behind them one can see nurses rushing about.
- In a story about patient survival after a harrowing event, it’s the physician alone who is interviewed about the patient’s care and recovery.
Nurses—and nursing’s role—are made invisible; our contributions are devalued, relegated to little more than a backdrop for most stories about health care or news involving delivery of services. And yet we all know that nurses were intimately involved in the event and outcomes. In ignoring nurses’ experiences and perspectives, health care coverage perpetuates nursing’s invisibility and ignores nursing’s central role in health care.
A replication study reports little progress after 20 years.
In the October issue, Diana Mason and colleagues present their report of a study they conducted as an adjunct to their recent replication of the 1997 Woodhull Study on Nursing and the Media. In the replication study,
” . . . nurses were identified as sources in only 2% of health news stories in the same print publications investigated in the earlier study, showing no improvement in 20 years.”
Asking journalists why they ignore nurses as sources.
In the related qualitative study we’re publishing this month, the researchers interviewed reporters and asked about their experiences using nurses as sources in news stories and about barriers and facilitators to doing so. The results are enlightening.
They reveal that, in addition to journalists’ bias and lack of knowledge about nursing, we have some culpability in this situation—many nurses are not prepared and/or unwilling to speak to members of the press. Put another way, “nurses and the nursing profession aren’t strategic about engaging journalists.”
Increasing the visibility of nurses.
The authors offer specific recommendations on what to do to increase journalists’ use of nurses as sources, such as contacting journalists and offering to help find nursing sources, getting your health care facility to include nurses when agreeing to media interviews, working with nursing organizations to develop a list of nurses who are capable and willing to meet with media, and more. The article is available for free until the end of the month.
Nurses are usually told not to speak to the press. All media outlets should be referred to the PR office. That may be one of the reasons journalists do not attempt to interview nurses.
However nurse experts and leaders should be exempt from that group
Historically nurses have been overlooked in media interviews during and after disasters. That is precisely why Dr. Barbra Mann Wall and I have written two books on nurses and disasters: Nurses on the Frontline, (Springer) and Nurses and Disasters: Global Historical Case Studies (Springer). I urge anyone interested in the topic to read these. Nurses are essential personnel in the response. Arlene W. Keeling, PhD, RN, FAAN