Communicating clinical nursing issues through the newspaper

Abstract

The information quality of nursing news is a critical factor in gaining public support for the acquisition of scarce resources necessary to undergird clinical nursing practice. A content analysis of 3,098 newspaper articles about nursing in 1978 was employed to examine the treatment of clinical nursing news. Among the variables studied were practice settings, educational levels, role clarity, professional activities, nurse-physician relationships, and degree of favorable image. Results revealed that the quality of news about clinical nursing varied by specialties, with maternity nursing and pediatric nursing news shown to be more progressive and community health nursing and medical-surgical nursing revealed as quite traditional. Psychiatric nursing received an inordinately low level of news coverage. Recommendations are offered to assist improvement in the amount and quality of news treatment of clinical nursing.