The press image of community health nurses.

A h a d The informational quality of press n w about community health nurses is a critical factor in gaining the required public support for the scarce resources needed to advance community health nursing practice. Using content analyses, 2,561 artides on community health nursing for the period 1978-1981 were coded for key message themes and compared with articles on other nusing subjects. Results reveal that although the subject of community health nursing comprised the largest share of all clinical nursing articles, they are (1) less visible in newspapers, (2) distributed unevenly per capita among the various states, and (3) written so as to communicate lowquality infomation. Analysis of annual trends shows that community health nursirlg artides, while expanding in absolute numh, constitute a declining proportion of nursing artides overall, and that the quality of information in current press coverage is diminishing. It is recommended that community health nurses embark on a concerted campaign to improve the quality of information carried in newspapers about their clinical specialty.