Are nurses invisible within the media?

We, as nurses, recognize the profound impact our occupation has and continues to have on the event of patient care, policy and business. Nurses work at patient bedsides, teach at universities, conduct groundbreaking research, function hospital chief nursing officers (CNOs), and hold high-level leadership positions in a wide range of business organizations. While this may occasionally look like common knowledge, I used to be saddened to learn that the media doesn’t search out nurses for his or her expertise. The study’s abstract was published this month and produced some relatively surprising results

In 1998, the unique was published by the Sigma Theta Tau International Honorary Nursing Society. The study, named after Nancy Woodhull, founding father of USA Today, aimed to find out the extent to which nurses are used as a source of health news. The researchers analyzed health reports published in two leading national dailies and five metro dailies, three general weeklies, one business weekly and five trade publications. They found that nurses were quoted in just 4% of newspapers and 1% in weekly and trade publications. The study also found that nurses were never quoted in health policy news and weren’t identified in photos in articles (Sigma Theta Tau International, 1997).

The Woodhull study, led by Diana Mason, MD, RN, FAAN, editor emeritus of , was replicated by a team of researchers on the George Washington University School of Nursing to evaluate whether progress has been revamped the past 20 years. The research focused on three phases (Mason et al., 2018):

• Phase I: Are nurses portrayed as sources of data and identified in health news images in public and skilled publications with greater frequency than in 1997?
• Phase 2: What do health journalists perceive as barriers and enablers to using nurses as a news source?
• Phase 3: Are nursing schools using social media to focus on the expertise of their faculty?

Scientists presented the outcomes of the study on May 8^vol on the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., after which a panel of journalists responded. A summary of the outcomes is provided below.

(Mason et al., 2018)
Print news was analyzed in an analogous method to the unique study. A random sample of 537 articles (out of two,234) were retrieved and reviewed from seven newspapers, three weekly magazines, and three health care trade publications, excluding those now not in print. The report found that the representation of nurses within the media has not modified over the past 20 years. Nurses were identified as sources in just 2% of quotes or other sources in health news and 1% in weekly magazines and trade publications. Nurses appeared in 13% of health care articles, with more frequent stories about childbirth (57%), the occupation (44%), quality (32%), and education (25%). They appeared less regularly in articles about research (9%), politics (4%) and business (3%). In several cases, nurses weren’t included, even when their perspectives were applicable to the subject at hand. Nurses were identified in 4% of the photos within the articles. Regardless of occupation, men were cited twice as often as women, and men appeared in 72% of photos in comparison with 48% for girls.

(Mason et al., 2018)
In Phase 2, researchers interviewed ten health journalists about their experiences with nurses as a source of health news. At this stage, the principal barrier to using nurses as media sources is prejudice about women, nurses, and positions of power in health care. Additional insights include:

• Although journalists imagine that nurses could make a very important contribution to health reporting, they don’t fully understand the work, education and responsibilities of nurses.
• Journalists often have no idea how one can find nurses to interview and have little time to seek out them on account of tight deadlines.
• Hospital and university communications staff don’t cite nurses as sources of data unless reporters ask.
• Bias, editorial policies, and processes may prohibit the usage of nurses as sources.
• Nurses and their colleagues lack strategies for engaging journalists.

(Mason et al., 2018)
This step assessed how nursing schools were using Twitter to advertise nursing faculty and researchers as experts. The latest tweets from the general public Twitter accounts of 47 of the highest 50 nursing schools were examined. They found that just about 80% of tweets were inward-looking or intended to interact nurses, members of the university/school community, or nursing conference participants, versus outward-looking tweets (intended to interact people outside the nursing and university/school communities). Additionally, just one% of the 58,000 nursing school user accounts belonged to media outlets.

Mason et al. (2018) cite several aspects which will contribute to the low representation of nurses within the media.

• Nursing is a female-dominated occupation, and girls proceed to be underrepresented within the media as sources of information.
• Journalists will not be conversant in the responsibilities of nurses and the way nurses can contribute to stories.
• Journalists lack knowledge on how one can find nurses with the expertise to publish a story. If they use a nurse, they could must justify it to their editor.
• Communications staff in universities and health care organizations might also be unaware of nurses’ expertise and infrequently recommend nurses as a source of data to journalists.

Yanic Rice Lamb, an associate professor of journalism at Howard University who served on the panel of journalists, said:

How can nurses and nursing leaders improve the representation of our occupation within the media? When presenting the study, researchers and journalists made several recommendations.

• Nurses should respond higher to journalists’ requests for interviews and be higher prepared for media appearances.
• Nurses should develop relationships with journalists and propose ideas for unique stories.
• Nursing schools should promote the expertise of their nurses by utilizing more outward-looking social media, especially Twitter, which many journalists follow to trace issues.
• Nurses must be more energetic in recommending their expert colleagues to journalists.
• Nursing leaders, equivalent to deans of nursing schools and CNOs, should meet repeatedly with their public relations staff and recommend their experts as news sources.
• The school of nursing deans and CNOs should incorporate media literacy training into the curriculum to enhance clinical expert nurses’ comfort in communicating with the press.

Co-investigator Barbara Glickstein, MPH, MS, RN, stated that “nurses are publishing great research in nursing journals.” She advised nursing journals to work with nurse scientists, support them, and teach them how one can write press advisories, and to shape research into newsworthy stories in order that their research can reach the general public.

Anne Dabrow Woods, DNP, RN, CRNP, ANP-BC, AGACNP-BC, FAAN, chief nurse for health science, research and practice at Wolters Kluwer, sponsor of the Woodhull study, said: “Nurse-led research in nursing and caregiving health care is extremely important to improving practice behaviors and outcomes. “Journal editors and publishers have a responsibility to work directly with authors to use their work in the media to improve the discovery and dissemination of their research for practical use.” Lisa Bonsall, MSN, RN, CRNP, senior clinical editor at Nursingcenter.com, a Wolters Kluwer company, added: “Nurses have unparalleled perspective and expertise, and I’m pleased to see this issue being revisited with even greater insight. Attention to the role of nurse researchers and nursing journals, as well as the role of social media, particularly Twitter, will help fuel this movement. There is a lot to learn from this research and I can’t wait to see what the future holds!”

Do nurses remain invisible within the media? The study didn’t include media that currently publish exclusively online; subsequently, future research can be needed to handle this issue. Until then, the reply is regretfully yes, nurses indeed remain invisible within the media. Nurses have unique perspectives and data to share. We should be proactive, increase dialogue with journalists and support one another to make sure that the impact nurses proceed to make in on a regular basis patient care receives the popularity it deserves.

To view the study presentation, click here: https://nursing.gwu.edu/woodhull-study-revisited

Women’s media center: https://www.womensmediacenter.com/

She – source database: http://www.womensmediacenter.com/shesource

Progressive Media Voices media training: http://www.womensmediacenter.com/search?q=Progressive+Media+Voices+Media+Szkolenia

Bibliography:
Mason, D. J., Glickstein, B., Nixon, L., Westphaln, K., Han, S., and Acquaviva, K. (2018). Center for Health Policy and Media Engagement, George Washington University. Downloaded from https://nursing.gwu.edu/woodhull-study-revisited

Sigma Theta Tau International (1997). . Indianapolis, IN: Sigma Theta Tau International, Center Nursing Press. Source: http://www.nursinglibrary.org/vhl/handle/10755/624124