Did you know that the Center for Nursing Advocacy hands out annual awards for the best media portrayals of nurses? They are called the Golden Lamp Awards, and this is the fifth year they’ve been handing them out.

#1 was John Blanton’s great Wall Street Journal article about being a second career nurse, “Care and Chaos on the Night Nursing Shift.” This is an excellent choice, and one of the best things I’ve read on the subject of what it’s really like to be a nurse.

There are also awards for the worst media portrayals, and here’s an interesting one: The New York Times ran a crossword puzzle in which the clue was ICU HELPERS and the answer was RN. The Center jumped on this immediately and began a letter writing campaign to Will Shortz, crossword puzzle creator extraordinaire at the New York Times. A couple of weeks later a new crossword appeared with a slightly more appropriate clue, Hosp. Workers. The answer? RNS. The Center believes that their letter writing campaign has been instrumental in this new clue/answer combination; however, this was neither confirmed or denied by the New York Times.

So what do you think? Did they go too far on this one, or do you find it truly offensive to be referred to as an ICU HELPER?

They also slam on Kelly Ripa, Atul Gawande, and of course, my favorite, House.