What can you do to shape a better image of nursing?
Take action with our plan to remedy the nursing image and the nursing profession.

Everyone has their own abilities and interests. So we have broken down the suggested actions into categories. Please select the description that best fits your background and consider what you can do to help us repair the image of nursing. Thank you.

General public, nurses and nursing students

Foundations

Nursing Faculty

Nursing Scholars and Researchers

Nursing Organizations, Schools and Journals

Action needed from the General Public, Nurses and Nursing Students

Speak to the Media

Speak to the World

Join Our Member Action

Engage Friends and Colleagues

Learn How To Affect and Create Media

Strengthen the Nursing Profession

Speak To the Media

• Letter-writing campaigns--please write a letter for each of our campaigns especially to:

• Submit story ideas to our database so the media can use these ideas to help the media build stories from a nursing perspective.
   
• Create a "Be a Nurse for a Day" program--ask your local media to shadow you at work so they can learn what you do and create media about it.
   
• Invite your local media to lunch to educate them about the work of nurses and to encourage them to cover the full range of nursing going on in your community. Gather interested local nurses, have them read "From Silence to Voice," and then set up an informational luncheon or roundtable discussion for the local media. Feel free to contact the Center to discuss further.
   
• Contact the US media by zip code.
   
• Contact US elected officials and government agency representatives on current nursing legislation from the National League of Nursing.
   

Speak To the World
 

• Order our "SAVE LIVES. BE A NURSE." bumper stickers and educate the world about the value of nursing.
   
• Start a health radio show, like HealthStyles with Diana Mason & Barbara Glickstein. Do health minutes and work to become a local health correspondent for television and radio news programs, like television commentator and author Pat Carroll.
   
• Write an op-ed for publication in a major newspaper or magazine. Get quick tips on how to write an effective op-ed and a list of media contact info.
   
• Blog about your experiences practicing nursing.
   
• Wear the RN patch on your uniform. Wear uniforms that make nurses look like professionals.
   
• When nurses live healthy lifestyles and look like healthy people, they have more credibility as health experts. See our easy plan to achieve a long healthy life.
   
• Create patient education materials--videos, articles, books, guides and web sites. The public needs to know that nurses are health education experts.
   
• Use nurse-friendly language.
   
• Develop video news web programs, to help you summarize your work and make it accessible to the media. For example, consider this clip by former US AIDS Czar Kristine Gebbie, RN, DrPH, Associate Professor, Columbia School of Nursing.
   
• Create, read or support nurse-friendly media and art.
   
• Order merchandise, including RN patches, and send gifts through the Center to support our work.
   

Join Our Member Action

• Become a member of the Center and tell others about our work and get them involved.
   
• Start a chapter of the Center in your local area.
   
• Monitor the media and alert us to noteworthy portrayals of nursing. Set your DVR, TiVo or DVD recorder to record every time you watch television. If you see a nursing portrayal you'd like us to consider covering, let us know.
   
• Register with our nurse expert database.
   
• Help connect us with potential funders to strengthen the Center's reach.
   

Engage Friends and Colleagues

• Distribute our news alerts by email (sign up, or see news alert archives).
   
• Create bulletin boards of our news alerts at your work place or school.
   
• Distribute our brochures to your colleagues, friends and students--just let us know how many you need at info@nursingadvocacy.org
   
• Give a presentation to colleagues and get some film clips here.
   
• Start a Nurse Shadowing Program for medical students and interns at your hospital or school. We must educate physicians as to the nature of nursing work so they can play a more positive role in creating nursing-related media, and so we can develop more collaborative relationships, which lead to better patient outcomes. See a sketch of a nurse shadowing program at Dartmouth.
   

Learn How To Affect and Create Media

• Read From Silence to Voice, which is nursing's manual on how to speak out about the life-saving work that nurses do. It is important for the health of our profession that you tell everyone you know about the value of your work.
   
• Read an excellent and succinct earned media outreach kit on the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration website.
   
• Learn how to write powerful letters.
   
• Get media savvy through media training--so you'll feel more confident presenting your ideas to the media.

Strengthen the nursing profession through:

• Recruitment into the profession;
   
• Increasing the number of men in the profession. Join the AAMN or men's nursing organization in your country--whether you're a man or not;
   
• Working for magnet status at your institution;
   
• Working beyond Magnet recommendations to improving nursing at your institution. See our recommendations.
   
• Implementing shared governance at your institution (read how it works);
   
• Working for safe staffing levels;
   
• Nurturing the next generation of nurses;
   
• Donating to Nurses House to support nurses in need;
   
• Strengthening holism practice and awareness in nursing by joining the American Holistic Nurses Association;
   
• Create nurse-run patient advocacy organizations to strengthen nurses' ability to advocate for patient health;
   
• Advocate for nursing with your legislators. Read this how-to manual from Advance for Nurse Practitioners.
   
• Create health care environments using evidence-based designs to promote better patient outcomes and less stress on nurses. For guidance, seek help from The Nursing Institute for HealthCare Design.
   
• Become a nurse!
   

How Foundations Can Help Strengthen the Nursing Image and Profession

• Consider funding the Center's work.
   
• Consider sponsoring and endowing the Nobel Prize for Nursing.
   
• Consider funding and endowing the Modern Museum of Nursing.
   
• Consider funding efforts to strengthen nursing clinical practice as we have outlined on our page about improving Magnet Hospital standards.

How Nursing Faculty Can Help Strengthen the Nursing Image

• Please assign or encourage your students to write letters for all of our letter-writing campaigns or ask them to write biographies on our nursing pioneers.
   
• Teach medical students and physicians about nursing. They need to learn what nurses do to save and improve lives, and how and why they should work collaboratively with nurses. Make it your school's goal to establish at least one class about nursing with your closest neighboring medical school. Physicians are some of the worst purveyors of negative media images of nursing. We must educate them about the scientific expertise of nurses. Please tell us when you've set up classes for medical students so that we can build a database of successful efforts. See a sketch of a nurse shadowing program at Dartmouth.

How Nursing Scholars and Researchers Can Help Strengthen the Nursing Image

• Consider the final stage of your research to be publication in the lay press. Call and meet with members of your local media to facilitate press coverage of your research results.
   
• Seek out appointments in schools of medicine to teach physicians and medical students in the area of your expertise.

How Nursing Organizations, Schools and Journals Can Help Strengthen the Nursing Image

• Develop a prominent link on your main page to explain your subspecialty of nursing to the general public. The link might read like: "What is dermatology nursing?" And then please link them to a page where you have an easy-to-understand definition.
   
• Build a list and establish relationships with your local health journalists. Invite them to seminars, conferences and lunch. Invite them to speak or moderate a panel or conference.  
  
• Offer to be a resource person for them--be reliable and credible.
   
• Pitch the media story ideas every so often. Be tenacious, but don't badger. Have a compelling story or issue to pitch including conflict, controversy, injustice, irony, or something ground breaking. Have images and a human story ready.
   
• Control the story. Identify one to three main points. Create the sound bite or rhetoric. Anticipate the opposing arguments. Provide data.
   
• Develop a large nurse expert database of nurses expert in their field, from a wide geographic area to have on hand when the media calls to speak to an expert.
   
• Train at least a core group of your nurse experts in media skills.
   
• Don't release research results in a vacuum--use your experts' research and clinical work to promote desirable health policies. Such a press release is more likely to get picked up by the media--in addition to promoting better health policies.
   
• Find a media person to write press releases, respond quickly to journalists and pitch stories to the media.
   
• Send thanks to the media for good or three dimensional coverage of nursing issues--whether or not the coverage is in your subspecialty.
   
• Send feedback to journalists who ignore nursing and focus only on physicians. Offer to provide them with nursing experts on similar stories in the future.
   
• Offer media awards for best coverage in your subspecialty.
   
• Develop art and children's books and games to stimulate wide interest in your specialty.
   
• Mobilize your base and work with the Center for Nursing Advocacy to protest objectionable portrayals of nursing.
  
• Send members of the media complementary subscriptions to your journal, newsletters or publications.

Other ideas? Please email us your suggestions.

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