We recently celebrated Nurses’ Week, when we see nurses receiving thanks for their hard work and dedication to health care. This recognition is essential, and our community needs to hear it. And then, for the most part, nurses will fade from coverage again until the next year.

Indeed, for more than two decades, nurses have appeared in only about 2 percent of health news reporting. During that time, two facts have remained unchanged: Nurses make up the largest sector of the healthcare workforce, with a caring presence in every practice setting, and we have been consistently named the most trusted profession, according to Gallup.

One thing that has changed? The simultaneous and rapid decline of trust in mass media — and the rapid rise of misinformation, disinformation and political propaganda in turn. Journalism is, in fact, one of the least trusted professions today.

It follows that, as American journalism scrambles to rescue its newsrooms, the industry would benefit from not just including nurses in their coverage but from adopting a nursing model and lens.

Nurses are trusted to enter people’s homes, deliver their babies, clean their wounds and prepare their dead for burial. That trust is not accidental; we cultivate it.........

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