Letter to the Editor

Article Outline

• Copyright

To the editor:

It was a great joy to read this most informative article “Image of the nurse on the Internet” by Kalisch, Begeny, and Neumann. The Kalisches have been the pioneer leaders to study the image of the nurse since the early 1960’s. The Kalisches (Phillip and Beatrice) are true scholars on the subject and have been offering nurses insights about nurse images from different perspectives for many years. It is always encouraging to read about new research and insights about the image of nurses. It is an area that merits our attention and concern.

The research method and findings were interesting and revealed helpful findings to the reader. I commend the authors for their work. The research findings are important for nurses to reflect upon today and to address areas that showed changes over time, as well as the favorable findings about nurses’ images on the Internet. The authors provided this information and possible reasons for changes over time. However I believe other reasons could have been discussed by the authors.

The sample selection was thoughtfully done. It would have been helpful and interesting, however, to have a sample of non-Western nurses to contrast their images with Western nurse images in their cultures. Transcultural comparisons are always of great interest with the growing numbers of non-Western nurses providing care in the United States and other places. Interestingly, the characteristics of caring as the essence of nursing did not become a major research finding. However, the word “compassionate” and several favorable attributes such as “competent, creative, scientific, research-oriented and authoritative,” and the finding of “cool/with it” as well as “autonomy” were noted, which are all related to caring. The nurses’ reasons for the increase and decrease in image changes would have been helpful for the authors to discuss. For example, the changing culture of nursing as a profession from 2001–2004 was probably a significant factor for the changing image of the nurse. During this time span, the powerful impact of physicians mainly in control of health services with their authoritative posture and political power could have decreased the creative and autonomous expressions and image of nurses from 2001–2004. I contend that the changing culture of nursing from the past traditional passive ethos of nurses and their dependence on physicians’ dominant role influenced the nurses’ actions and their image and decreased the autonomy and decision-making of recent years. These were powerful forces to change the image of nursing.

As a recent client in a so-called “premier-labeled” hospital, I was concerned that nurses were mainly task-oriented and less caring in client-nurse encounters. Many nurses were uncomfortable talking to the client about their caring needs. Exploring and entering the client’s world view was difficult for most professionals. Providing concrete or doing tasks for the client was foremost on the professional nurse’s mind and activities. Caring attributes and entering the life ways or concerns of the client seemed to be difficult for most nurses.

In general, this was a scholarly research report that focused on the image of nursing after several decades, and it was highly encouraging to read. Such contrasts of the images of nursing over time are of great interest and extremely important to study. Most of all, it was great to have the researcher, Beatrice, build upon her past imaging research work with a focus to explore in-depth changes in images over time with qualitative indicators. Such discoveries increase one’s knowledge about image phenomena and lead to important research questions that need to be explored in the future.

My congratulations on an excellent and timely research article of great interest to the profession. I am confident that all interdisciplinary faculty, students, and other nurse researchers will draw heavily upon these research findings in their teaching, clinical practices, and in the recruitment of men and women into nursing. The positive public image of nursing can be emphasized and extolled. The research findings can be used to support the positive public image of nursing. It will also stimulate different kinds of research questions as the culture of nursing continues to change and nurses grow in their professional development with autonomous and creative expressions. My hope is that the research pioneers on images of nursing will continue to offer comparative image perspectives of nursing from their early work in the 1960s. The profession is grateful for their early pioneering and creative work with multi-media such as films, literature, posters, and many other media sources many decades ago. Their research to document the multifaceted perspectives of the nurses’ image in different contexts with different media was not only creative, but unique. Such comparative and longitudinal image studies are of great value to the profession and to public consumers of nursing services.