Media Coverage

In the article A Sharper image by Karen Schmidt, Karen talks about how, much like other articles we covered in class, the nursing profession is basically invisible to the media. Meaning nursing or nurses are rarely in the news. Since through the media is how many people are informed about world events. This makes many people unaware of the real significance nurses have in our community. Her thesis is as follows:

Nurses have not received much media coverage since Sept. 11. Even though nurses in New York and in many other states collected supplies and volunteered at hospitals and emergency care sites hours and days after the World Trade Center attacks, their contributions generally went unnoticed in the media (Schmidt, 2001).

Karen goes on to state how during tragedy of September 11th only firefighters, the police, and rescue crews were mentioned in the news but nurses who were donating their own time and risking their lives equally as much as other departments were not recognized. I believe this is ok. People with these types of jobs, especially nurses, spend their time and even make a career out of helping their fellow man not to get a pat on the back or get on television for the things they do. Nurses do what they do because they want to help others and they want to make improvements in the quality of life for others. Yes, I feel what Karen is saying is true but those nurses, they should have been there because they wanted to help others not because they wanted to be on the five o'clock news. Karen follows her opening statement quoting part of an interview with Beatrice Kalisch, Ph.D., RN, who is a professor of nursing and director of the Nursing Business and Health Systems division at the University of Michigan she goes on to talk about nurses in the media's past and how during world war one and world war two nurses were seen as heroic and angels of mercy due to the large amount of media coverage they received (Schmidt, 2001), unlike today's nurses who are almost nonexistent in the eyes of the news.

Because of this lack of media Karen feels it is vital to educate the media about who nurses are and what nurses do. Margaret Pike, Ed.D., RN, director of strategic development for Sigma Theta Tau, believes we need to take an aggressive approach and that nurses need to speak up to educate the media about nursing in general. Sigma Theta Tau organized a campaign that seeks to educate the public about the profession and encourage more young people to make nursing a career choice (Schmidt, 2001).

After reading this article I honestly believe they are correct when the author and the people she interviewed talk about how rarely one will see nurses or nursing in general in the news. On a person level I feel that nurses do not really need to be in the news. Nurses should be nurses because they want to help people and make sure they have the proper equipment, care, and education to overcome their illness or at least maintain the optimum level of life. Nurses should not be nurses so they can brag about how wonderful they are. I love being a nurse and there is not any other profession I would choose but the people that write these articles and the people that share these same views seem to almost have a borderline personality because they want all of this attention