Repository logo
 

eTheses

Permanent URI for this communityhttps://eresearch.qmu.ac.uk/handle/20.500.12289/7180

This community contains an online collection of PhD theses and selected undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations written by QMU students and researchers.

PhD theses are available to be browsed, searched, read or printed by anyone interested in their content.

Undergraduate and postgraduate dissertations in are only available to be read or printed by registered QMU staff and students (login required).

Contact Us

If you have any items to add or if you have any queries or comments about this repository or its contents, please contact eResearch@qmu.ac.uk.

Click on a link below to browse or search collections.

Browse

Filters

20171

Settings

Author: search.filters.author.Balaam, MartinaSubject: search.filters.subject.Nursing

Search Results

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Virtuous, invisible and unconcerned: nurses, nursing and the media
    (Queen Margaret University, Edinburgh, 2017) Balaam, Martina
    This study, underpinned by a hermeneutic methodological strategy, investigates how British nurses make sense of representations of nurses in the popular media, and their perceptions of the potential implications of media representations for nursing as a profession and their own sense of self. The study was designed because of a number of factors: the popularity of hospital dramas and the increasing prevalence of hospital based 'fly on the wall' television programmes, a plethora of press coverage about the poor quality of nursing care, concerns from the nursing profession that the media representation of nurses have a detrimental effect on the nursing profession and nurses' sense of self, and a scarcity of research which has explored nurses' perceptions of representations of nurses in the popular media. Twenty-five nurses from a broad spectrum of nursing areas were recruited to the study. Eighteen participated in focus groups and a further seven nurses were interviewed individually. A thematic analysis of participants' descriptions, perceptions of, and emotional response to the representation of nurses in the media, revealed that nurses hold diverse, contradictory and ambivalent views of media representations. Whilst the way nurses describe representations in the media is consistent with previous research, which argues that nurses are represented by a number of stereotypes, there are novel and significant findings presented in this thesis, which may have implications for the nursing profession. The study reveals that some nurses hold a virtuous understanding of the profession and secondly, that some nurses hold a stereotypical understanding of nurses. Despite participants dismissing the media as 'just entertainment', having no consequence to the status of the profession or their sense of self, they nonetheless expressed concern at the 'negative' way they were represented in the media. Consequently, there is a need for nurses to challenge both existing media representations and the way they talk about nurses and the profession.

This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work. Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. In most cases, these works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.