A Nurse’s Perspective

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/opinion/letters/nurses-health-care-media.html

Version 0 of 1.

To the Editor:

Re ‘Nurses See Everyday Need for ‘Medicare for All,’” by Jeneen Interlandi (Editorial Observer, May 28):

As a registered nurse I was pleased to see the voices and experiences of nurses being highlighted as our health care direction is discussed.

Nurses have long been invisible in the media, as the Woodhull Study on Nursing and the Media pointed out in 2018. This study was originally done in 1997 and found that only 4 percent of health news stories captured a nursing perspective. No difference was found upon repeating the study 20 years later.

There are four million nurses in the United States and many reasons for their lack of coverage in the media. But let the next 20 years not be a repeat of our past 20 years.

Kathleen PuriChattanooga, Tenn.