Editor’s Letter
It seems like it was just yesterday I was welcoming in 2009 and now, as I write this, its the first day of summer. Just like that the year is half over. Hope you all had a wonderful spring! This month we have a wonderful submission to our Nurses On The Go feature from Ann Mathiews, R.N.. We'd also like to congratulate Bernadette M. Bailey, RN for her winning submission to our "Nurses On The Go" feature. Her story about her life working as a labor and delivery nurse was chosen at random as our latest winner and Bernadette will be receiving a $50 check.
If you would like to share an amusing or heartfelt story or just give our readers some insight into your life as a nurse, we would like to here from you. Its always nice for those who may work in a completely different nursing capacity to hear from others what their job entails. Who knows, you may entice someone to finally make that job switch into a different area of nursing expertise because they read your story. All submittals should be between 500 and 800 words. To submit a story, send an email with the subject line Nurses On The Go story submission to info@nurse-recruiter.com.
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How Nurses Are Portrayed on TV:
One New Show Has Some Nurses Asking to Pull the Plug
One of my all-time favorite shows recently had their final episode: ER. I was always a big fan of Nurse Hathaway (and Dr. Ross too) then later Sam Taggart. I always thought, if I ever end up in the ER, please let me be attended by a nurse like them (and a doctor like Dr. Ross, or at least Dr. Gates).
Of course not all nurses portrayed on television are fan favorites. Most recently, the nurse role as portrayed by Edie Falco on Showtime's new show, Nurse Jackie, has met with a lot of criticism. In the show, her character forges an organ donor card, pops vicadon pills that she received from a pharmacist (with whom she is also having an affair), flushes a patient's ear down the toilet, and then steals his wallet to give to a pregnant women. She is no Florence Nightingale. The New York State Nurses Association has requested that a disclaimer be added to the show, that says Falco's "Jackie" is an aberration.
"We believe that the public's view of nurses is influenced by TV dramas, and we have yet to see an accurate portrayal of what nurses really do," wrote NYSNA Chief Executive Officer Tina Gerardi in a letter to Showtime. Showtime officials have denied the request.
The NYSNA describes "Nurse Jackie" as someone who has "no qualms about repeatedly violating the nursing Code of Ethics" and hoped a disclaimer will distance the show from the real world. Gerardi said she's worried that a negative character would discourage people from joining the profession.
Of course any negative feedback from nurses regarding the show will probably create an even bigger buzz about it, which makes the Showtime executives very happy. This show is in contrast to the other new show premiering on TNT, HawthoRNe, which stars Jada Pinkett Smith as Nurse Christina Hawthorne. As a chief nursing officer, she is depicted as a hero who "prides herself on standing up for her patients and preventing them from falling through the cracks of hospital bureaucracy," according to TNT's web site
Should these two shows survive, they'll be joined in early 2010 by Mercy, an NBC drama centered on three nurses at a hospital, one of four new medical dramas planned for the 2009-10 TV schedule.
Not all nurses are unanimously against the series. Showtime screened "Nurse Jackie" for a group of emergency room nurses at New York's Roosevelt Hospital and more than four in five said they enjoyed it and would recommend it to a friend according to Showtime executives.
Registered nurse Sandy Summers has co-written a book entitled Saving Lives: Why the Media's Portrayal of Nurses Puts Us All at Risk. The book details how the media's portrayal of nurses may endanger public health.
"When you have physician characters on most hospital dramas, they spend most of their time doing nursing work," said Summers, 47, whose book cites ABC's Grey's Anatomy and Fox's House as particular offenders. "They make people think that nursing doesn't take much skill, and that nursing is mostly about getting stuff for physicians. And when nurses are portrayed as unskilled, we can't get the funding we need to hire them."
Summers, details many ways in which TV has tarnished the nursing image. For example, showing nurses who have more interest in becoming doctors, showing nurses as sex objects, shows where nurses are portrayed as mostly unskilled assistants to physicians and showing doctors doing things nurses typically do (i.e. giving intravenous medication, spending hours with one patient). She maintain that these contribute to students becoming less interested in studying to be nurses and medical professionals convinced nursing is menial work.
Nurses On The Go
Why I Became a Nurse
The sun was shining. The blinding light reflected off the apartment pool surface as Lori and I sat sipping frozen margaritas and watching our four children splash in the shallow baby pool. Laughing as freckles emerged on our skin instead of the even tan we were seeking, we joked about the customers that frequented the diner where we both worked. The customers confused us because we were both blonde and thin. Lulled into a false sense of security, Lori said, "I'm going to close my eyes a minute, watch the kids".
"Sure", I replied, sipping the icy margarita and starting a head count. One, my Jessica; two, my Alex; three, Lori's Jimmy, and wait a minute…where is Lori's Joey? I sat up spilling the margarita. The children were here a minute ago. Where was Lori's Joey? I scanned the area around the pool. He had a ball earlier. I looked across the lawn and into the cabana. Where was Joey?
As I stood up to call for Joey, I saw a teenage girl waist high in the adult pool. She held up a limp rag and say "does this child belong to someone?"
I walked swiftly over to the girl taking Joey's limp body and laying him down on the lawn. I had only seen infant CPR once in my life. Joey was three years old. I didn't know if it would work. I shook his foot, looked, listened and felt for breath. I breathed into his tiny body watching the chest rise. I could feel a pulse, so I started five compressions, then I held him up to give him five back blows, then again from the beginning. Was I doing it right? I didn't know. Keep it up, my self dialog cheered me on. My hands were shaking as I struggled to overcome the adrenaline rush.
A crowd gathered. My husband arrived and petrified he grabbed both our children and stood watching me. A lady with a ridiculous hat said "My husband knows CPR". She tried to pull Joey from my arms.
"Go get him" I said shaking her off. And breathed into Joey's mouth again. Someone woke Lori and she screamed as she realized it was her child. Standing frozen and watching me work to save her son, I saw her holding her breath.
Chest compressions. Five. Back blows. Five. Breath again. Better seal. Breath again. Chest rise. He coughed. I sat back. He coughed again. The paramedics arrived and swarmed Joey. I rose from my knees and took two steps back. Holding my breath, as equipment emerged and hid Joey from view. A stretcher appeared and in a blur Joey disappeared into the ambulance. The teenage girl said "I didn’t realize he was dead".
Dead. Neither did I. I only saw a child not breathing. Joey went into cardiac arrest three more times in the ambulance. Each time the ambulance stopped, the paramedics resuscitated him. Following in our car, we prayed silently with tears streaming from our eyes. All the fears unspoken fermenting just below the surface. Arriving at the hospital we streamed into the waiting room as the stretcher rushed past us with a blur of firemen, paramedics, white coats, and green scrubs.
I stared at the clock. Each minute passing was an eternity. Did I do it right? I had only seen CPR once. Did I do it right? My husband silently holding my four year old and my two year old. Fear pasted on their faces. Even my two year old son understood the enormity of what was happening. I couldn't comfort them, we just didn't know yet.
A white coat came into the room. "Are you the mom?" He asked Lori.
"Yes," Lori whispered and looked at me. I stood and put my hands on her shoulders willing her strength and hope.
The white coat had a big smile. "He is fine. Come see." Relief washed over us. We ran to see the smiling face of the pale boy with the crooked grin.
"Why did you do that?" asked Lori mad and happy as she reached to hug her son.
"There was a penny. I wanted the penny." said Joey unaffected by the near-tragedy.
Today Joey is a Pentecostal minister and I am a nurse and I teach CPR. The best part of being a nurse is not just knowing what to do in a crisis but learning each day to help people transcend their crisis, their pain, their tragedy. Hospice nursing, for me, is an honor. The honor is found in sharing very intense and memorable moments that shape the essence of people's lives. Each day I try to be the change I wish to see in the world.
My favorite instructor was that visiting nurse who came to the home of an eighteen year old mother to teach her CPR because it was part of a high risk program out of the Valley Settlement House in West Orange, New Jersey. I wish I had learned her name but I will never forget the way she made me feel and the life she saved.
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