Thankful for nurses: J&J’s new campaign aims to reset pandemic clock back to gratitude

Nurses star in J&J’s campaign centered on the importance of nurses who are increasingly stressed, burnt out and quitting the profession (via Johnson & Johnson)

In the ear­ly days of the pan­dem­ic, peo­ple cheered for nurs­es – de­liv­er­ing food, writ­ing thank you notes and ring­ing bells night­ly to show their ap­pre­ci­a­tion. But some­thing shift­ed this sum­mer, and now John­son & John­son wants to re­mind peo­ple of the grat­i­tude that nurs­es still de­serve.

Call it pol­i­tics or pan­dem­ic weari­ness or the re­sult of al­most two years of a dead­ly pan­dem­ic, but nurs­es to­day face threats and mis­treat­ment from pa­tients and their an­gry fam­i­ly mem­bers. And nurs­es are leav­ing the pro­fes­sion in record num­bers.

J&J’s new ad cam­paign ‘Nurs­es Rise to the Chal­lenge Every Day’ launch­es on­line and in lo­cal news­pa­pers on Sun­day, aim­ing to shine a pos­i­tive spot­light on the pro­fes­sion. It al­so in­cludes J&J dou­bling down on its ed­u­ca­tion, fel­low­ships, schol­ar­ships and pro­grams to sup­port nurs­es.

In the cam­paign video ad, close-up shots re­veal tired nurs­es in scrubs and as they weari­ly re­move masks, a scroll reads: ‘You give 100% of your­self, then some­how find 50% more.’

At the heart of the cam­paign are the many roles that nurs­es take on: sci­en­tist, pi­o­neer, heal­er and rock star in the video ad, while the print ad lists dozens more in­clud­ing teacher, ther­a­pist, cheer­leader, en­tre­pre­neur, in­flu­encer, dot-con­nec­tor and mind read­er. So­cial me­dia posts have a sim­i­lar theme with ‘Nurs­es are’ in at­ten­tion-get­ting red let­ters, while the roles scroll and change in the gif an­i­ma­tion.

‘When you fast for­ward to where we are now and look around on­line, pret­ty much all you see is stress, burnout and turnover – at up­wards of 20% per year,’ said Lyn­da Ben­ton, se­nior di­rec­tor of glob­al com­mu­ni­ty im­pact strate­gic ini­tia­tives for J&J Nurs­ing.

She added, ‘It’s an im­por­tant step to take to reaf­firm our com­mit­ment to the pro­fes­sion, but al­so go back and put a pos­i­tive mes­sage out there. Peo­ple can­not for­get how im­por­tant nurs­es are to the health­care sys­tem. If you don’t have nurs­es, the sys­tem falls apart.’

Nurs­es are al­ready leav­ing, though. Re­cent sta­tis­tics from the US Bu­reau of La­bor Sta­tis­tics re­port­ed that nurs­ing and res­i­den­tial care fa­cil­i­ties lost 11,000 jobs in No­vem­ber. The same re­port shows 450,000 health­care jobs lost since Feb­ru­ary 2020.

And if they’re not out­right leav­ing, they are think­ing about it. Among 6,600 crit­i­cal care num­bers, 66% have con­sid­ered leav­ing their jobs be­cause of the pan­dem­ic, a sur­vey from the Amer­i­can As­so­ci­a­tion of Crit­i­cal-Care Nurs­es found this year. Al­most all of them (92%) be­lieve the pan­dem­ic will short­en nurs­es’ ca­reers. The nurs­ing group launched its own cam­paign, ‘Hear Us Out,’ in Sep­tem­ber to give a re­al­is­tic win­dow in­to their front­line re­al­i­ty and urge peo­ple to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

As part of the ef­fort, J&J is ask­ing nurs­es to tell their sto­ries on­line and part­ner­ing with ‘The Drew Bar­ry­more Show,’ plan­ning to in­clude some of them in up­com­ing nurs­es-themed episode.

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Merck’s new antiviral molnupiravir (Quality Stock Arts / Shutterstock)

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Common performs onstage, December 2020 (Getty Images)

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