FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE July 13, 2006
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT:
Leslie Flowers, Public Relations Specialist
1.317.828.6925 or leslieflowers@sbcglobal.net
Honor Society of Nursing takes a lead role in the development
of historic documentary
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Gannett: "Few TV documentaries will match the impact, emotion and human connection of this one".
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INDIANAPOLIS — They knew where they were going, but they had no idea what they were going to. For the first time, Vietnam nurses reveal the horrors they witnessed, the care they provided and the emotional scars they earned as nurses in Vietnam.
WE tv, the only cable network dedicated to helping women connect to one another and the world around them, has announced the premier of “Vietnam Nurses with Dana Delany,” a documentary about the young American nurses sent halfway around the world to serve in horrific and dangerous conditions. Delany, who played Army nurse Colleen McMurphy on ABC-TV’s “China Beach,” narrates the documentary.
The documentary, produced by Creative Street Entertainment, premiers at 10 p.m. EDT, Fri., Aug. 18, 2006, with limited commercial interruption. An encore presentation airs the next evening at 6 p.m. EDT, Sat., Aug. 19, 2006.
The documentary is based on the forthcoming book The Fine Art of Nursing Care: Lessons in Healing from War and Art, by Margaret Carson, RN, PhD and Linda Finke, RN, PhD. The honor society will publish the book in spring 2007. Margaret Carson, lead author and honor society member, interviewed 172 nurses who served in Vietnam. She uncovered an immense reservoir of buried pain and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“Sigma Theta Tau was instrumental in bringing the production of this dramatic story to the public,” said Dave Smith, the director of the documentary and chairman of Creative Street Entertainment. “They supported the effort from the beginning, brought us together with the authors, made possible the original demonstration piece that sold the concept and will head the educational distribution of the DVD version of the show.”
“We knew this was a significant story, not only for nursing, but for American history,” said Nancy Dickenson-Hazard, RN, MSN, FAAN, chief executive officer of the honor society. “Many of these nurses came home from the war, then went right to work and had families. It wasn’t until 20 years later when their children were grown and the house was empty that the trauma of what they experienced in Vietnam came to the surface. The book and documentary reveal their anguish and show how many of these nursing heroes are only now working through the trauma.”
In the book, Carson and Finke share how nurses who served in Vietnam signed up under an economic draft in which the military paid for nursing school or continuing education in exchange for enlisting. Recruiters told the nurses they would not be called to Vietnam. But after the Tet Offensive, the Army called up all nurses on active duty. The nurses were totally unprepared for what they would see and experience. Literally thrown into the role, often under fire and always in danger, these young women saved the lives of tens of thousands of soldiers and comforted thousands more who died from their wounds.
This documentary was made possible in part through the generous support of the Johnson Johnson Campaign for Nursing’s Future. In 2002, Johnson Johnson developed this nationwide campaign in support of the nursing profession. Working with health care leaders and nursing organizations, such as Sigma Theta Tau International, the National Student Nurses Association, the American Association of Colleges of Nursing, the American Nurses Association, the American Organization of Nurse Executives, the company hopes to bring more people into nursing, develop more nurse educators and retain the talent already in the profession.
For more information or to schedule an interview with the authors or producers, please contact Leslie Flowers, 317.828.6925, or leslieflowers@sbcglobal.net.
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The Honor Society of Nursing, Sigma Theta Tau International, is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to improve the health of people worldwide through leadership and scholarship in practice, education and research. Founded in 1922, the Honor Society of Nursing has inducted more than 345,000 members. Members are active in more than 113 countries and include practicing nurses, instructors, researchers, policymakers, entrepreneurs and others. The society’s 446 chapters are located at 535 institutions of higher education throughout the United States, as well as in Australia, Botswana, Brazil, Canada, Ghana, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Pakistan, South Africa, Swaziland, Sweden, Taiwan and Tanzania. More information about the society can be found online at www.nursingsociety.org
REVIEWS - VIETNAM NURSES WITH DANA DELANY
The New York Times
August 18, 2006
TV Review
Nurses and the Daily Horrors of Vietnam By ANITA GATES
The most famous American nurse in the Vietnam War was fictional: Colleen McMurphy, played by Dana Delany in the ABC drama series “China Beach” (1988-92). So it isn’t surprising to find Ms. Delany, who won two Emmy Awards for the role, doing commentary in a documentary about those nurses.
Her name is even in the title.
“Vietnam Nurses With Dana Delany,” which has its premiere tonight on WE, professes to be eight stories about eight women, but it is one large story in which the women’s accounts blend and blur and add up to a single, distressing reality. Maureen Adduci, Diane Carlson Evans, Dorothy Harris, Judy Herrington, Susan O’Neill, Candice Sullivan, Donna White and Sharon Zimpher all appear on camera, reflecting on their experiences, from the shock of their arrival in a war zone (one was advised, “Shoot yourself in the foot or get pregnant, now”) to their return home to less than a hero’s welcome.
There was no counseling and no debriefing, the women point out. Life just went on. Ms. Herrington remembers, “I was 21 and came home as an old lady.” Ms. Sullivan says, “I felt like I was a little bit of an embarrassment” to her family.
Skillfully assembled and edited photos, film and anecdotes add up to the show’s perpetually affecting message: Being in Vietnam was like living a horror movie. The women remember “this never-ending line of bodies” and the routine nature of blood and dying and rocket attacks. (Many nurses were assigned to units that were under fire.)
“It’s so surreal that you’re kind of floating through everything,” remembers Ms. White, who was at the 27th Surgical Hospital in Chu Lai.
Television viewers have become inured to accounts of the agonies of war, but a few incidents do stand out. There was a little girl with napalm burns, lying in a crib screaming in pain, who, it seemed to Ms. Evans, “screamed herself to death.”
There was a young serviceman who, before he died, called out “Sarah” over and over. It turned out to be the name of his baby daughter, whom he had never seen. There was Riley L. Pitts, an officer whom the nurses knew well before he was killed in combat.
But by far the most powerful part of “Vietnam Nurses” is the last 15 minutes or so. As the Vietnam Women’s Memorial in Washington is dedicated in 1993, onlookers hold posters that read “Welcome home, women” and “Thank you.” One woman whose son died in Vietnam attended, she said, in hopes of finding someone who had worked at that particular hospital at that particular time. She succeeded.
Some 11,500 women served as nurses and in other roles in Vietnam. Here are some of those young women with glowing faces, girlish smiles, extreme-bouffant hair and high hopes. And here they are again, a good bit older but no less appalled by what they saw and endured.
VIETNAM NURSES WITH DANA DELANY
WE, tonight at 10, Eastern time; 7, Pacific time; 9, Central time.
Produced by Creative Street Entertainment.
MIAMI HERALD - TELEVISION REVIEW
Vietnam Nurses With Dana Delany, 10-11 tonight, Women's Entertainment
BY GLENN GARVIN
ggarvin@MiamiHerald.com
Maureen Adduci, tentatively and painfully, as she recalls the first words of counsel she got from a colleague when she reported for nursing duty at the U.S. Army hospital in Vietnam. Piece of advice,'' the older nurse said laconically, glancing up from her cigarette. Shoot yourself in the foot, or get pregnant. Now.''
For the 7,500 women who served as military nurses, Vietnam was a special kind of hell. They spent endless hours patching up hideously maimed soldiers … or worse, watching them die. The army wouldn't let them shoot back at the enemy, and they wouldn't allow themselves to cry. When they finally came home, they lacked even the meager support systems available to the men they nursed. No one, not even their families, wanted to hear their stories. Those tales, haunting and heroic, are finally told in Vietnam Nurses With Dana Delany.
Narrated by the actress who won two Emmys playing a troubled but dedicated U.S. Army nurse in Vietnam in the 1988-91 TV drama China Beach, this stunning documentary is seamlessly woven from interviews with eight former military nurses, newsreel footage, snapshots and even home movies shot during the war. Words and images … many of both profoundly disturbing … tumble from the screen so quickly that Vietnam Nurses at times seems like a sensory assault. Certainly that's the way the war felt to these women at the time. I was just 21,'' recalls former nurse Judy Herrington, and came home as an old lady.''
Mostly from sheltered families in small-town America, the young women who went to Vietnam as nurses … whether to pay for school, to break away from the mommy track in a pre-feminist world, or just for an adventure … had little idea what they were getting into.
Instead of the clean, orderly operating rooms they practiced in at nursing school, the women found themselves pinballing through a mangled landscape of blood, terror and chaos. Limbs dangling from shredded tendons, flesh sizzling from phosphorus or napalm, their patients were often barely recognizable as human. Even nurses with emergency room were unprepared. "They were just blown to pieces,'' recalls one woman of the men she nursed, her voice still quiet with awe.
Along with their new medical skills, the nurses had to learn to be skilled weapons technicians (telling the difference between incoming and outgoing artillery rounds, or rockets from mortars, was literally a matter of life and death) and dynamic actresses. They're watching [your] face the whole time, to see what your reaction was to their wounds,'' recalls one nurse. Another remembers devising a graceful way to skirt the truth: "I couldn't tell them they would be all right, but I told them they were in good hands.'' Even successfully patching up a soldier could seem a dubious achievement to the nurses … it only meant he went back to combat. The problem was maybe the next time you saw them, they were dead,'' remembers Herrington.
For all the Dantesque accounts of life in Vietnam, the documentary's most heartbreaking stories are the ones that occurred when the nurses came home. They suffered the same sense of dislocation and unreality as returning soldiers … one woman remembers her shock at walking around and seeing so many unmaimed people … compounded by a sense that they had violated gender boundaries. I felt like maybe I was a little bit of an embarrassment to my mom,'' confesses Candice Sullivan, a Missouri farm girl before becoming an army nurse. Because nobody else's daughter went.''
Yet the work was not without rewards, terrible though they might have been. The nurses got to see a side of men not always visible outside war zones. They were so brave and courageous,'' recalls Herrington. I just thought the world of them and the way they handled their pain.'' The men, in turn, worshiped their nurses, who stood in for mothers, sisters, daughters and wives, especially at the end. Often a nurse was the only one to hear a soldier's final words. There's a certain sacredness to that,'' muses one.
Shamefully, when the nurses asked for a more tangible reward … a monument … it took them nearly two decades to pry it out of Congress. (Though as Diane Carlson Evans, the former nurse who spearheaded the drive, notes in the documentary, the wall bearing the names of the Vietnam dead is in reality a mighty testament to her colleagues: If it wasn't for us, the wall would be much wider and much higher.'') One of every seven U.S. soldiers in Iraq is a woman. Watching Vietnam Nurses, you hope we'll do better by them.
Along with Vietnam Nurses With Dana Delany, Women's Entertainment is airing two episodes of China Beach, the land mark Vietnam War drama starring Delany that ran on ABC from 1988 to 1991. The two-hour China Beach pilot airs at 8 p.m., and an episode titled Vets … in which reminiscences of real-life nurses are intercut with scenes from the show … runs at 11 p.m. Rights issues with China Beach's rocking 1960s soundtrack have kept it off DVD, which means this is a rare chance to see one of the best dramas in the history of broadcast television.
Gannett News Service, by Mike Hughes
Few TV documentaries will match the impact, emotion and human connection of this one.
Its form is simple: We meet eight women who were nurses during the Vietnam War. Some crumbled afterward; some seemed to thrive.
Diane Carlson Evans, a Minnesota farm girl, married a doctor after the war, had four children and spearheaded the Vietnam Women's Memorial. She seemed strong and sturdy; she admits now that she had thoughts of ending her life.
Simply and perfectly, "Vietnam Nurses" weaves the eight stories. The result brings a crescendo of human pain and passion; it's profoundly moving.
Entertainment Weekly
FRIDAY 8.18
10-11 PM
Vietnam Nurses With Dana Delany
WE tv, TV-14-V
Look, you're just going to cry. That's how it goes when you listen to Vietnam War nurses recall not only the hell of severing men's limbs and seeing friends die brutal deaths but also the postwar decades spent in numbing, sometimes suicidal depression. By the time they win the fight to get a memorial next to the Vietnam wall, you're pretty much guaranteed some waterworks. The special only hints at some of the deeper, darker stuff that went on but we're not about to find too much fault with anything honoring these kick-ass chicks. B
UPI News Service, 08/05/2006
Dana Delany to star in WE network's 'Vietnam Nurses' TV special
Emmy-winning actress Dana Delany is set to serve as host of a special on the WE cable channel about women who nursed U.S. soldiers during the Vietnam War. "Vietnam Nurses with Dana Delany" is scheduled to premiere Aug. 18 on WE. The documentary chronicles the work of young nurses in Vietnam, who were often untrained to work in the grueling conditions. Many lost their innocence in seeing war and death firsthand.
"I am honored to recognize these women as host of the WE tv documentary, 'Vietnam Nurses,'" said Delany. "During my time on (the TV drama) 'China Beach' I developed a deep respect for the young nurses who went to Vietnam and saved countless lives under horrific conditions, with little concern for their own welfare."
Delany won two Emmys for her performance as a Vietnam nurse Colleen McMurphy in "China Beach."
THE INDIANAPOLIS STAR
MOVIES: BONNIE BRITTON
Locally made film on cable
August 11, 2006
Mark that TV viewing calendar for 10 p.m. Aug. 18 when "Vietnam Nurses with Dana Delaney" airs on the WE cable network. Produced by Indianapolis' Creative Street Entertainment, "Vietnam Nurses" will be shown with limited commercial interruption that night, and will air again at 6 p.m. Aug. 19. The Mass Ave.-headquartered Creative Street made the one-hour documentary with Dave Smith as director/writer and Steve Katzenberger producing.
The doc is told from the viewpoint of several young women sent to tend troops in South Vietnam. The nurses, some of them barely out of their teens at the time, were not prepared for the dead and dying. Many are still haunted by the sounds, sights and losses of the war.
The movie is based on the research of author Margaret Carson for the book "The Fine Art of Nursing Care: Lessons in Healing from War and Art." The book is scheduled for publication in 2007 by Indianapolis-based Sigma Theta Tau International, the honor society for nursing.