Nursing Today Essay

Nurses these days have positive and negative images from the general public. Negative stereotypes portray nurses as being overbearing, sexual, and incompetent. For example: Naughty Nurses, Airheaded, and Doctor’s Handmaiden. These stereotypes are portrayed in the media constantly even though nursing is a challenging respectable profession. Some of the positive images that are portrayed by the public are strong, patient advocates, dedicated, trustworthy, profession highly in demand, and highly intelligent. There are numerous actions that can be taken to actively fight the negative stereotypes. It generally starts by promoting positive images of the nursing students. This could start at the college setting or even the clinical setting where a lot of interactions will be done with the general public and strangers. I also think that if you actively educate others on the true meaning of nursing then that would also help fight negative stereotypes. This could generally be done in health career fairs, schools, colleges, and health centers where nurses are actively involved. Also establishing public image committee in the local neighborhood or city would also help. There are also popular celebrities that actively help with stereotypes. For example: Christina Aguilera as both a nurse and patient, exploited negative stereotypes of nurses. If popular celebrities can take active role in helping stop negative stereotypes for nurses then anyone can. It would definitely take a lot of hard work to stop it but eventually the word would come across. Moreover, television nurses also promote positive nursing it’s understood that medical dramas are meant to entertain, not serve as documentaries. Nevertheless, media-driven messages are also very powerful, influencing the culture and collective mindset. There are numerous current images of nurses in the media and challenges nurses to engage in professional and public service designed to promote a positive media and public image of nursing. In conclusion, if we actively did take a part in stopping negative stereotyping for nurses or any other profession it would benefit and bring more respect to the nursing world. It doesn’t take much to down grade a rofession but it takes a lot of hard work and time to stop the negative stereotyping. As I listed examples above to help reduce negative stereotyping all it takes is active participants to bring a change. In this time and age we often get influenced by individuals very fast and so why couldn’t we actively bring positive influence to society and help the nursing profession in general to lower negative stereotyping. Because it will greatly help our profession of nursing become more respectable in society.