Nurses, They’re Making Their Lists. Does Honesty Exclude Influence?

As 2012 draws to a close, editors compile their annual lists for publication: The Top 10 Worse Movies of the Year, The Twenty Most Twittered Tweets, The Single Most Googled Christmas Gift, and so on. I enjoy lists, even making up a few of my own: Things to Do Today, lists of Goals For The Week, Month and Year.

December is a list-lover’s dream: Christmas gift lists, grocery lists of items necessary for making the best holiday meal ever, and of course, the requisite list of who’s been naughty or nice, which I will point out, are not necessarily mutually exclusive characteristics.

Unfortunately, some characteristics do appear mutually exclusive, keeping a group of people on one list, but off of another. I’m talking about The 2012 Gallup Poll results, which list nurses as the most honest and ethical of professionals for yet another year.

I don’t need Gallup to inform me of the public’s trust in nurses. Once, a retailer refused to require my driver’s license as proof of identity when I wrote him a check. “You’re a nurse,” was his explanation. “Nurses never write bad checks.”

While I don’t know if it’s true that nurses never write bad checks, one thing they never do is make it on Time magazine’s list of The 100 Most Influential People in The World. A couple of actors made the list. So did the son of Kim Jong Il. Of course, Stephen Colbert made the list; he’s on all the lists, except the Gallup’s list of the most honest and ethical professionals, which we nurses top. That may create a new list: the only list of 2012  excluding Stephen Colbert.

I digress from my point, however, which is this: why are there no nurses on Time’s The 100 Most Influential People in The World list? Not only of 2012, but ever? Florence Nightingale, who founded modern nursing by improving the plight of wounded soldiers, was not included on Time’s somewhat tongue in cheek list, The 100 Most Influential People of History.

I do not cast doubt on the ethics or honesty of those listed as Most Influential. In fact, many on the list, including Stephen Colbert, serve by bringing humanitarian needs to the forefront, and deserve recognition.

Perhaps we nurses should focus on raising leaders, imbued with ethics and honesty, towards influential goals. With health care provision in the limelight of national attention, there has never been a better time for nurses to aspire towards positions on both lists.