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The Center for Nursing Advocacy has issued its Golden Lamp Awards for 2005. Covering both TV and print media, the awards identify the best and worst portrayals of nursing last year. Here are the winners-and losers.

 

Five best portrayals of nursing

 

1. Nursing Against the Odds: How Health Care Cost-cutting, Media Stereotypes, and Medical Hubris Undermine Nursing and Patient Care, by Suzanne Gordon, April 2005.

 

2. "Critical Care: The Making of an ICU Nurse," Scott Allen, Boston Globe, October 23 to 26, 2005.

 

3. "Number of Philippine Nurses Emigrating Skyrockets," Michael Sullivan, Morning Edition, National Public Radio, February 3, 2005.

 

4. All nurses worldwide who advocate through the media for better health; various nursing organizations (such as the California and Massachusetts Nursing Associations) and individual nurses are cited.

 

5. "Aging and Infirmity are Twinned No Longer," Jane Brody, The New York Times, January 25, 2005.

 

Five worst portrayals of nursing

 

1. Six episodes of the TV show Grey's Anatomy, which depicts nurses as fawning or bitter losers and often shows physicians performing tasks that nurses do in reality. Its writers make a point of attacking the nursing profession.

 

2. Five episodes of the TV show House. Nurse characters tend to be silent, barely visible clerks while physicians perform key nursing tasks.

 

3. Two episodes of the short-lived fertility clinic TV drama Inconceivable, which portrayed nurses as shallow seducers.

 

4. Three episodes of the TV show ER. Despite some efforts to show respect to nursing, this show still continues to portray nurses as physicians' handmaidens.

 

5. Two episodes of the TV show Scrubs, which reflects the prevailing Hollywood image of nurses as peripheral health care workers with limited skills who report to physicians.

 

For more, visit http://www.nursingadvocacy.org.