Impact Of Media In Portrayal Of Nurses

Nurses are educated and highly skilled professionals who dedicate their lives in taking care of their patient, clients, and residents. They are the front line caregivers and educators; they are influential in improving patient/ resident/client outcomes using their knowledge. The Ontario Nurses’ Association (ONA) is committed to ensuring the image projected of nurses in media and advertisements is a positive one, reflecting the true value of their hard work, dedication and professionalism. Most nurses believe that the media’s treatment of nurses falls short of an accurate and fair representation. Recently a few news channels and television programs have made an effort to bring in front of the society the accurate image and portrayal of nurses, though the stereotyped foremost images are still the dominating ones of nurses in people’s minds. ER, Grey’s Anatomy and House are only a few medical shows with a large scale audience around the world. None of these shows accurately portray nurses positively; in fact the images these shows portray are awfully downbeat which has contributed in so many nurses quitting their nursing jobs, nurses are portrayed as insignificant hospital employees. (ONA, 2008).Impact Of Media In Portrayal Of Nurses

Background

Canadian nursing dates back to the 1639 in Quebec, Canada with the Augustine nuns, they opened a mission that cared for the physical needs of patients. It was because of this mission that the nursing apprenticeship training in North America began. It was the catholic order of nursing that started spreading their messages across Canada. Nurses were strictly female. In 1874 the first formal training program was started at the General and Marine Hospital in St. Catharine’s in Ontario (ONA, 2008).