1. We spend as much time thinking as we do the listening and caring we are more well known for. When we walk into a room, we are sizing up everything and everyone that we see, kind of like on CSI, making an instant priority list in our head, and acting on that. We have to have a good understanding of the usual disease processes and treatments we see in our specialty, because a doctor may breeze in and out, rapidly explaining something to a shell-shocked family, and we will have to spend the next 8-12 hours explaining and re-explaining that to a psychologically overwhelmed person. There is a lot of active learning, discussing research relevant to the field, and excitement for the medicine and science that goes on behind the scenes.

2. That we might not be writing the orders, but we save many a life with our hawk-like watchfulness, quick thinking, advocacy, and gut instincts.

3. That we work, and work hard. We go without bathroom breaks and lunches most days, even when pregnant. That we don’t get any snow days. That we don’t get our vacations because of short-staffing, and are frowned upon when calling in sick. That we miss every other holiday and every other weekend with our families. That we get yelled at by physicians who are having bad days. And then yelled at by families who are scared and overwhelmed. That we don’t ignore the call-light because we don’t care or are lazy, but because we have been forced to take on too many patients. And the minute we sit down at the nurses station to shove a granola bar in our mouth and catch up on charting, someone comes over, shoves an empty pitcher at us, and says, “While you were here chit-chatting, I’ve been waiting for a fresh pitcher of water for 15 minutes!”

We do have nurses in our subject matter expert database and have had nurses conduct briefings with writers. HH&S has no power over the final story or the accuracy of health portrayals. We simply serve as a free resource to writers. We don’t tell them what to write. We do provide expert consultations, tip sheets with health facts and key messages about health issues, a Real to Reel quarterly newsletter that captures news headlines, case studies, real stories of real people and more. Some of the shows ask us for expert consultations on the roles of various types of healthcare providers including nurses, nurse practitioners, midwives, medical residents, and physician’s assistants among others.

One question I ask our experts, and I’ll ask you now, is if you could reach up to 20 million people in one hour with 3 key messages about nurses, what would those messages be?

Thank you, Sandra

With the exception of the ER and the OR, nurses are the first to notice and respond to a Code Blue, giving compressions, pushing drugs, and leading the team until the attending physician arrives.