Projecting the Image of a Nurse - Essay Example

She wears a name badge and leans over her patient, making eye contact with the patient and listening intently while taking vital signs and acting as a liaison between the patient and the doctor. This would be a clear cut scenario. Times have slightly changed, as has the projected role and image of a caregiving nurse. “Although the public's view of nursing has changed over time, most people do not appreciate the complexity and range of today's professional nursing role,” (Chitty & Black, 2011).

Nurses are becoming more educated, specializing in certain areas of specific branches of health care and there is a significant increase in the population of males entering this occupational field. One of the most critical roles that a nurse plays is that of patient caretaker. Patient satisfaction often has a lot to do with the role that the nurse has played on taking care of the patient. There must be a nurse-patient dyad bond. While the nurse is in charge of taking all other signs and symptoms, the nurse's biggest role is to help a patient understand their health care plan (Tejero, 2012).

To maintain this relationship, a nurse must be personable, friendly and kind. Sometimes a nurse must also play the role of being calm and patient, allowing the patient and doctor to dictate their needs to the nurse. Florence Nightingale could be the first person that is responsible for the way that a nurse is portrayed. She let on originally that nurse is inferior to a doctor. Since then, other images have influenced the image of the nurse such as war nurses on television shows, including the way that nurses are even portrayed on soap operas.

All of these have an impact on the image that the profession has (Cohen, 2007). It is thought that even during a nursing shortage in 2001, that it could have been the media to blame for the way that nurses were portrayed. Television series shows such as “ER” and “House” may have been influential while a Coors brewery ad used naughty nurse images in a 2006 advertising campaign for alcohol. The role of a nurse as a sexual being is one of fiction (Cohen, 2007). Since the Internet has a huge impact on society, it is interesting to know the way that the nurse's image is portrayed online.

The media's image has an impact not only on patient's feelings but also about recruiting others into the profession, the way that consumers use nurses services and can even impact the amount of financial services that a health care facility may obtain. When looking at information on the Internet about the projected image of a nurse in years 2001-2004, about 70 percent of Internet sites had portrayed nurses as “intelligent, respected, accountable, committed, competent and trustworthy,” (Kalisch, B.J., Begeny, S.

& Neumann, S., 2007). Nurses were also perceived in the images on the web to appear to have specialized knowledge. Many of them were attractive and well-groomed and were committed to patient care. Sometimes the image of being sexually promiscuous and creative or innovative were also factors that were displayed online. Regardless, the study by the authors suggested that the image of a nurse could definitely be changed by the way that a nurse is portrayed online (Kalisch, et al., 2007). One thing is that nursing has been identified as one of the most