Who We Are

The Nursing Vision is a for-profit venture created to support a non-profit organization--The Truth About Nursing. The Nursing Vision is led by Sandy Summers, RN, MSN, MPH, (right) the founder and Executive Director of The Truth About Nursing. Prior to that, she co-founded and directed the Center for Nursing Advocacy from 2001-early 2009.

Ms. Summers has led the effort under both organizations to improve nursing's public image by increasing public understanding of nursing through improving media depictions of nurses.

Ms. Summers is the co-author of Saving Lives: Why the Media's Portrayal of Nursing Puts Us All at Risk. See more about Saving Lives.

Ms. Summers founded The Truth About Nursing in late 2008, as it transitioned the media advocacy effort over from the Center for Nursing Advocacy which she and fellow Johns Hopkins graduate students founded in April 2001. Ms. Summers has Masters Degrees in Nursing and Public Health from Johns Hopkins University (2002). She received her Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Southern Connecticut State University in 1984.

Prior to her graduate work, Ms. Summers practiced nursing in the emergency departments and intensive care units of some of America's major trauma centers, including San Francisco General Hospital, Charity Hospital at New Orleans, Washington Hospital Center (D.C.), Georgetown Hospital, and D.C. General Hospital. From 1994-97, Ms. Summers lived in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where she taught nursing teachers at the Central Nursing School, undertook nursing research for the International Research Development Centre and Redd Barna (Norwegian Save the Children), and served as Office Manager for the American Bar Association's Law and Democracy Project. From 1989-90, Ms. Summers established a New Zealand branch office of her brothers' company, CNC Software, Inc., which is a global leader in computer-aided manufacturing software. From 1985-86, Ms. Summers practiced ICU nursing at St. Thomas Hospital in the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Ms. Summers is a member of Sigma Theta Tau, the international nursing honor society, and Delta Omega, the public health honor society.

Ms. Summers lives in Baltimore, Maryland with her husband and two children. She spent her childhood in Vernon-Rockville, Connecticut.

Awards

Sandy Summers' direction, won the Center for Nursing Advocacy media awards in 2004 and 2005 from the American Academy of Nursing.

Sandy Summers was awarded an Outstanding Alumna award from Southern Connecticut State University in November 2006.

E-mail Sandy Summers

List of Upcoming and Prior Speaking Engagements

Publications:

Sandy Summers & Harry Jacobs Summers. (2009). Saving Lives: Why the Media's Portrayal of Nurses Puts Us All at Risk. Kaplan Publishing, New York.

Frances Rieth Ward & Sandy Summers, (2008). 'Ethics Education, Television, and Invisible Nurses', The American Journal of Bioethics, 8:12,15.

Sandy Summers & Harry Jacobs Summers. (2008). Chapter 7, pp. 105-129, Decision-Making in Nursing: Thoughtful Approaches for Practice, Sandra B. Lewenson and Marie Truglio-Londrigan, eds., Jones and Bartlett Publishers, Inc.
Winner of a 2008 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award.

"Nursing Our Beer Back to Health," RATTLE, online essay accompanying Winter 2007 issue (No. 28), http://www.rattle.com/rattle28/nursingourbeers.htm.

Kristine Gebbie & Sandy Summers (December 8, 2006). "Nurses' achievements merit international recognition." Op-ed published in the Baltimore Sun.

Sandy Summers & Harry Jacobs Summers. (2006). Changing Poor Portrayals of Nurses in the Media: The Center for Nursing Advocacy. In D. J. Mason, J. K. Leavitt, & M. W. Chafee (Eds.). Policy and politics in nursing and health care, 5th ed. (pp. 184-194). St. Louis, MI: Saunders Elsevier.

Claire Fagin, Sandy Summers & Harry Jacobs Summers. "The Nursing Shortage," Kango Jissen no Kagaku (Science of Nursing Practice), the Japanese Journal of Nursing Science, Nov. 2005, Vol. 30, No. 12, pp. 37-45, and Dec. 2005, Vol. 30, No. 13, pp. 48-57 (co-author with Claire M. Fagin and Harry Jacobs Summers); republication as part of book tentatively titled Nursing Strategies to Protect People's Lives, LifeSupport Company (2008).

Sandy Summers & Harry Jacobs Summers. (2004). "Viewpoint: Media 'Nursing': Retiring the Handmaiden: What viewers see on ER affects our profession." American Journal of Nursing 104 (2), p. 13.

Sandy Summers. (2004, April) "Nursing students should be seen and heard." Imprint, Journal of the National Student Nurses Association, pp 57-59 and 55.

Ms. Summers published an account of one of her Cambodian experiences in Culture crash: Trauma in 1994 Cambodia, Journal of Emergency Nursing, 25 (6), 26A-28A (1999).