'A Special Calling:' A Nurse Responds To Bashing By 'The View' Co-Hosts

Last weekend during the Miss America pageant, contestant Kelley Johnson, an intensive care unit nurse from Colorado, spoke about one of her experiences with an Alzheimer’s patient, highlighting her work as a nurse as her talent.

The next day, two of the hosts of ”The View,” Michelle Collins and Joy Behar, made comments about Johnson’s speech, with Collins comparing it to reading an email and questioning Johnson’s choice for a talent, and Behar cricticizing her for wearing “a doctor’s stethoscope.”

The backlash from nurses has been strong and swift, with thousands posting responses using the hashtags #NursesUnite and #NursesShareYourStethoscopes. On Friday, Johnson & Johnson and Eggland’s Best pulled their advertising from ”The View” in response:

Denise Priestley, an Ocean County nurse who graduated from Brick Township High School and now lives in Barnegat, wrote a response to the comments by Collins and Behar, saying that the pair have forgotten the critical role nurses play in patient care.

“I have been a nurse since 1987, a midwife since 2000, and received my doctorate in 2014,” Priestley, pictured above with her husband when she received her doctorate, told the Patch, as she spoke about why she wrote the response. “I am also proud to say my daughter Hayley is an RN, and my grandmother was an LPN (licensed practical nurse) so nursing is a multigenerational passion in our family.”

Here is the open letter she wrote:

To the hosts of The View,

My applause and bravos go to Miss Colorado! The members of the nursing profession have very special talents as they provide the care, skills, compassion, knowledge, perseverance, and dedication to each of the people whose lives they touch.

Whether they are comforting a frightened child, reassuring a concerned parent, laboring with an expectant couple, teaching a new mom to breastfeed, holding the hand of an elderly patient, collaborating with the healthcare team on a patient’s plan of care, providing medications and treatments to a hospitalized patient, starting an IV, educating a student or a new nurse, or assistant in the operating room, a nurse is there advocating and supporting his/her patients. Nurses perform their duties selflessly and passionately, for to be a nurse is a very special calling.

Yes, we are not physicians, but we still have a vital role in the healthcare of our patients and of society as a whole. We are highly educated and skillful, and, unlike the physicians, we spend more time at the bedside with our patients. We provide holistic assessment, care and education to each of our patients. Our care is unique and greatly different to that of physicians. I am not belittling the important role of physicians in the healthcare industry, but I am saying that we should in no way be compared with them nor should our role be underestimated.

I have been a nurse for 28 years and I probably have more years of education than many of the physicians I have worked with. My education is in a different healthcare discipline than that of a physician, but my education and talents are still merit worthy and deserve respect.

As an advanced practice nurse and a “doctor” of nursing practice, I have my education and training and like all members of our profession deserve respect and acknowledgement as a critical member of the multidisciplinary care team!

Shame on The View co-hosts! You each should think about a time when you or a loved one was hospitalized. Who was at the bedside caring for you? The nurse. The nurse was there assessing, educating, caring, and listening.

The nurse is the first line of care, as we are there noticing even the most subtle changes in our patients’ conditions, and the nurse is the one notifying the physician of the patients’ needs and concerns.

As your show is titled ”The View,” you are entitled to your opinion or view but most viewers would agree that you should be educated in the facts before sharing such a ‘view’ with your audience.

If the Miss America pageant is all about swimsuits, evening gowns, dancing and singing, this country is very lost.

I do not wear bikinis and tight fitting evening gowns, and I cannot sing or dance, but I am a beautiful person and proud to wear my “scrubs and stethoscope” and call my talent “being a nurse.”

Watch Miss Colorado’s monologue: