The image of nursing is not portrayed with enough accuracy – nor appropriate respect – by Australian media, which is of particular interest to Professor Pieterbas Lalleman, a scholar visiting Flinders University from Fontys University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands.   

As the Professor of Nursing Leadership at the Person-Centeredness in an Ageing Society research group, Professor Lalleman examines nurses’ work, governance and the history of nursing and healthcare practice. He also conducted an important study of how nurses are represented in Dutch Media, to see if nursing has an image problem that effects the intake of new generation nursing students. 

Now he is in Adelaide, working with the Caring Futures Institute to look at how nursing is represented in Australian newspapers – noting that similarities exist between Dutch and Australian health care systems, and that nurses’ important roles in both countries are underplayed in the media. 

“What we have found in our studies is that the depth of knowledge that nurses have of specific health care topics is rarely acknowledged by media,” says Professor Lalleman. “They are rarely presented as experts in their own fields of expertise. 

“Our research showed that Dutch newspapers would receive comment firstly from a health organisation’s CEO (mostly male), then a doctor (also mostly male), and add a minor comment from a nurse as the third voice on an issue that was directly related to nursing.” 

Their role was also underplayed in accompanying images. Nurses appeared in images in 22.4% of the articles, often in an indistinguishable role, accommodated by captions such as “hospital employees moving a patient”. 

“Despite their pivotal role in healthcare, nurses remain underrepresented in media, particularly in areas involving policy and decision making. This imbalance reflects a broader issue, with the expertise of nurses being overlooked when shaping public health discourse,” explains Professor Lalleman.  

“Addressing this will require a collaborative effort, where nurses receive media training to amplify their voices and work more closely with journalists to ensure their contributions are recognised in critical healthcare discussions. And this is crucial because nurses are the ones who know the nitty gritty details of what happens on the ground floor of health care workplaces – and their input is crucial to introduce positive changes towards person-centred fundamentals of care.” 

There are solutions to change this. In the wake of Professor Lalleman’s research in The Netherlands, action was taken at Fontys University to improve the image of nurses in the Dutch media. The defining change was for nurses to become proactive and take greater charge of controlling their voice in the media. They achieved this by generating more opinion pieces and letters to the editors of publications, to present strong voices at the forefront of relevant health issues.    

“The nurses learned to be confident in this area by having specific training in media communications, which we conducted with the journalism teaching department of Fontys University,” says Professor Lalleman. “This provided nurses with the confidence to explain nursing roles, issues and research in a way that was easily accessible to the general public, but not in a teacherly or academic tone – and that’s quite leap for many nurses to make. Once they do it, they get more assured, and that leads to them having a more powerful and regular voice in the media.” 

Professor Lalleman’s research team is now examining more than 1650 recent articles that featured nurses in major Australian newspapers, to draft specific outcomes that will best apply to help bolster the media image of Flinders University nursing researchers, staff and students.  

He is also looking at how the context of an improved nursing image in the Australian media may impact work that the Caring Futures Institute is doing to improve person-centred fundamental health care issues across the community. These outcomes will help in creating effective, crafted messages through the media that can influence the way our community considers care and health issues. 

“It’s necessary to change the image of nurses in the media, and we are hopeful this type of proactive approach will ultimately help nurses to conduct research that will help the wider community recognise the voice of nursing as a respected voice of authority.”