Give Nurses Pens and Syringes

This story originally appeared on 34th Street.

Rx: Nurse Voices, ASAP. Not PRN.

Nurses rank as the No.1–most–trusted profession consistently from year to year—above doctors, grade school teachers, and even members of the clergy. The work they do is multifaceted. It’s more than just delivering medications and performing assessments—it’s wholeheartedly devoting themselves to the care of their patients and the advancement of the profession. The job title of a nurse is hard to define because nurses are never just a nurse; they are therapists, friends, leaders, experts, and voices. Despite being a complex profession with a wealth of clinical knowledge and experience, nurses’ representation in the public space is limited. 

“We recognize that gender bias exists in the media and that power hierarchy exists in health care institutions,” Barbara Glickstein says. Glickstein is a nursing media strategist with an extensive background in reporting and writing. She produces for health and health care policy media group HealthCetera, hosting blogs and podcasts. Additionally, Glickstein is an adjunct lecturer at the Hunter–Bellevue School of Nursing at the City University of New York and the founder of Barbara Glickstein Strategies, a media training company for healthcare professionals. 

Alongside Glickstein, Diana Mason is a nursing media expert who is passionate about the training and amplification of nurse voices. Diana Mason is the senior policy service professor for the Center of Health Policy and Media Engagement at the George Washington University School of Nursing. She is the former editor–in–chief of the American Journal of Nursing and co-producer of a weekly healthcare radio program that has aired since 1985. 

In 2018, Glickstein and Mason led the revision of the Woodhull study; the original Woodhull study, which was conducted 20 years ago, analyzed thousands of articles published in United States media. The study found that less than 1% of the news magazines and industry publications examined mentioned nurses. Specifically in health news articles, nurses were referenced in under 4% of articles.

The 2018 revisit of the Woodhull study led to several critical findings about barriers, biases, and poor representation of nurses in the media. From 1997 to 2017, the use of nurses as sources in health news dropped from 4% to 2%. “Our study showed that communication departments in academic medical centers will refer to a physician as an expert source even when a reporter asks for a nurse expert,” Glickstein says. This is an astonishing takeaway, given that registered nurses make up one out of every five healthcare workers, the largest group in the industry. There is a continued invisibility of nurses in health news media. 

Mason and Glickstein cite specific examples of experiences during the Woodhull study that caused them to continue to push for nursing representation in the media. When speaking to journalists about interviewing nurses, a healthcare reporter says to Mason: “I don’t cover nursing. I cover the business of health care. So why would I interview a nurse?” Mason replies, “You interview the nurse because the chief nurse of the hospital probably oversees 70% of that hospital’s budget.”

Glickstein recalls a similar story from her time working on the study. She was interviewing a reporter who covered cardiac research and used a senior cardiac nurse to explain new studies to her. When the reporter cited her sources, she wasn’t allowed to cite the nurse. “The nurse does not have permission from the chairman of the department to be quoted, he is the only one in the department allowed to be quoted,” the reporter tells Glickstein. The chairman was a male physician. 

“When you ask a mother who brought her child to the clinic late you find out that it takes two hours by bus to get there and the bus only runs on a limited schedule,” Glickstein says. Nurses are trained to think about the big picture—they consider all the social determinants of health affecting a patient’s life. When a patient is not adhering to their care plan, nurses ask why. “Nurses see the world through a lens that is different from some others; that connection between the patient's story and policy is powerful,” Mason says. Nurses aren’t writing for themselves. They are writing for their patients, their profession, and for the progress of health care policy. 

With Penn’s School of Nursing being the number one nursing school in the world nine years in a row, there is no doubt the students and faculty have distinct voices and experiences that should be heard. “It’s about nurses being able to control the narrative of what they do,” Marion Leary, the director of innovation at the Nursing School, says. She writes for multiple publications, has two podcasts, and consistently works with nurses eager to share their stories. “There’s a lot of things that nurses do that are misrepresented or not portrayed at all when you're watching television shows or when there is a health care crisis, and nurses aren't even considered for interviews or as experts in certain areas,” Leary says.

In the Philadelphia community and on Penn’s campus, nurses are taking steps toward the forefront of health media stories. Ali Gorman, a former U.S. Navy nurse and 6abc News health and medical reporter, is an advocate for nurse voices in health news. Currently, Gorman works for BiotechTV, reporting on the biotech scene in the Philly area. “There is an inherent trust people feel when they see a nurse in the news. Nurses are genuine and truly want the best for everyone.” Gorman says. “You’re not putting the politics into it. You’re not an influencer. You’re not getting paid to promote something. You’re just giving people what they need in an unbiased fashion, in an accurate way.”

For Gorman, the COVID–19 pandemic brought some silver linings for nurses. Philadelphians stood on their streets at 5 p.m., clapping and cheering for healthcare workers as their 12–hour shifts ended. Gorman and the nursing community were grateful for the public’s newfound appreciation for what they do every day. “The general public was more understanding of public health and how these things matter and why they matter,” Gorman says. However, despite the influx of articles and social media posts supporting our frontline healthcare workers during the pandemic, nurses remained silenced in the media.

Since 2020, nurses’ voices are needed more than ever. “Nurses are in so many different spaces,” Leary says. “We’re at the bedside, we’re in the community, we’re in schools, we’re in boardrooms and startups, in the military, Congress, all these places, which gives us a breadth and depth of knowledge that is unparalleled.” A nurse’s diverse perspective can encourage innovative approaches to health policy change, public health improvements, and even the fine arts. 

”Two years ago, I actually partnered with a theater company and we created two original plays based on frontline health workers’ experiences,” Leary says. This idea not only shows the impactful stories of nurses through a unique art medium, but it also positively contributes to the performing arts space. This wouldn’t have been made possible without the courage and creativity of nurses who were determined to tell their stories through theater. Leary believes that all nurses deserve spaces to share their experiences on the floor—even if it feels untraditional.

Disrupting bias and misinformation about the nursing profession starts with nurses themselves speaking up about what they do. According to a 2023 holistic review, 40% of examined studies saw an overwhelming amount of negative media portrayals of nurses. 20% found the images to be more negative than positive. Leary blames nursing education for failing to teach nurses how to be active with their voices. Additionally, nursing programs fail to bring nurses into the spotlight. “We need to prepare nurses when going through nursing school, with the confidence, ability, skills, and resources to be prepared to speak to the media,” Leary says. Currently, there are no courses in the plan of study for the Nursing School’s bachelor’s degree in nursing program that educate nurses on how they can use their voice in the media.

Gorman similarly believes there are barriers to representation created by hospital administration. She says, “So many times I would walk in somewhere and I would be like, ‘Can I talk to the nurse or the nurse practitioner?’ And they—the administration—would say, ‘No, no, no, no. You can talk to the doctor.’” Gorman encounters this commonly in her work as a journalist. “Hospitals don’t realize that nurses are the ones that are imparting information every single day,” she says. “Maybe it’s one–on–one and not to a bigger audience. But they’re doing it.”

For years, nurses have tried to harness the power of the media to create change at the bedside and in practice. This is difficult to achieve, as nurses have faced significant obstacles to seeing equitable, correct, and steady nurse voices in the public media space. Addressing bias and misunderstanding of the nursing profession starts with educating nurses to step up and use their voices. We must not forget to uplift nurses in clinical environments and the paths they pursue to advance public health. It’s time the media challenges their perception of nurses by embracing them—not pushing them away. ”Let’s advance the conversation from why should nurses be sources in the media to focusing on the fact that our voices matter,” Glickstein says.