Читать книгу Kelly Vana's Nursing Leadership and Management - Группа авторов - Страница 184

Historically, the public appears to hold nurses in higher esteem during wartime. The media's image of nurses both reflects and influences nurses' professional identity. Lusk, the author of this chapter, has conducted two studies assessing: (a) how nurses were portrayed in the general literature, 1880–1928, and (b) how nurses were portrayed in hospital management journals, 1930–1950 (Lusk, 2000, 2002). Lusk found that nurses were indeed portrayed as more knowledgeable and autonomous in these media during war years. As the First World War started, images of nurses and articles about them burgeoned in the popular press. Reporters were sent over to Europe to write about hospital work. The reporters stressed that only trained nurses, not volunteers, were needed. Nursing was portrayed as a highly patriotic occupation in which female nurses had a significant presence near the front lines. The Second World War was similarly covered. In marked contrast to the 1930s and the 1950s, when nurses were depicted as minimally skilled and subservient to physicians, nurses in advertisements during the war years of the 1940s showed nurses engaged in more complex and independent procedures, for example, adjusting nasogastric suction and setting up oxygen delivery systems. These changes may be correlated with peace time perceptions of nurses' work as lower skilled physicians' helpers as opposed to war time perceptions of nurses' work as skilled, autonomous providers of care who would help the country “win the war.” What do you think of the fact that nurses' professionally benefit from positive portrayals during times of war? There are many reasons we can speculate about why nurses were portrayed less positively after the war, during the 1950s. Some of these affect the image of nurses today. What reasons can you think of?