Does the public image of nursing reflect a profession that has lost its ethic of caring? Harrison detected signs of this in the United States of America (USA) in 1990, as reflected in her JAN editorial, and a similar case can be made today in the United Kingdom (UK). Television soap operas portray the seamy (and steamy) side of hospital life; documentaries with titles like Undercover Angels use hidden cameras to expose nursing malpractice; and anecdotes recycled as news items feature supposedly uncaring nurses much like those Harrison described.
Such is the deluge of media information, misinformation and opinion that the public image of nursing is hard to pin down. In the intervening years, digital technology and the globalization of mass communication have changed the media beyond recognition. There is so much data from so many sources. It would be a Herculean task to replicate the studies pioneered by Kalisch and Kalisch, who analysed representative samples of media portrayals of nursing in the USA (for example, in Kalisch et al. 1983).