In another great post, Sara Ellis at RNDegrees.net has hit the topic on the head once again! Negative stereotypes of nurses really do hurt patients.
Nurses don’t get the respect and therefore we don’t get the money to help us educate nurse educators and new nurses to take on the roles that nurses really do in real life. In the long run, the nursing shortage is going to impact more and more lives. And the quality of care will affect too many.
If only we could convince viewers to watch the drama and NOT believe everything they see about nurses on TV and in the movies. The writers of these shows are not nurses and even if they have a nurse as a consult, real life doesn’t always make for the best entertainment. They have an agenda to meet as well. How many male roles and how many female roles to develop? Which ones are the strongest to attract the best actors? In the end, the program has little to do with any of the careers portrayed.
For example, Castle is one of my favorite shows. But how many police departments would let an author do all of the things Richard Castle does on that show?
So if you really want to watch Nurse Jackie, it’s not bad story line and the acting is good….but it degrades nurses to death!
3 Comments
Mike Mullen
I agree with you about that Nurse Jackie show on TV. It is pretty ridiculous! How can we recruit new nurses with the negative role models that media puts out for entertainment? How will MDs respect us if the media continues to depict awful nurses on TV?! We as nurses need to continue to do what we do everyday and not let the media ruin our profession.
Aloha,
Mike M. from Nursing in Hawaii
http://www.nursinghawaii.blogspot.com
Sara
Thanks for the great mention of my blog post! It's good to know other nurses are helping bring this issue to the light of day!
Sara Ellis BSN,RN from Nursing Education Blog
peny113
I definitely agree with you that nurses are sometimes degraded in movies, television shows, even in some news and articles in the web. Some people must not be blame solely for their discrimination of nurses but also the media who gave wrong impressions about men and women wearing nursing uniforms. Stereotyping nurses is not just dangerous to many people's health but even to their own soul.Imagine judging other people specially the nurses based from the fictional character produced by televisions. Anyway I'm not against media but I'm quite irritated with people who usually believe on things media creates without even proving if it is correct or not.