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Our executive director's letter Desperate Housewives. (Our petiiton is now closed)

Dear Messrs. Cherry and Perkins: I urge you to make amends for nursing stereotypes that appeared in the December 4, 2011 episode of Desperate Housewives. In the episode, a nurse character at a rehabilitation facility deflected Gaby's flirtation by pointing to his chest and saying, "Male nurse"--meaning that he was of course gay and so not interested in Gaby sexually. The false idea that all men in nursing are gay undermines efforts to increase diversity and, because no serious profession excludes straight men, also helps to prevent real nurses from getting the respect and resources they need to save lives. The nurse character in the episode also came off as a low-skilled bureaucrat. He did nothing a lay person could not do. There seemed to be little point to the restricted-access rule he was enforcing in this specific case. And the first thing he did when Gaby approached was to complain that she was keeping him from reading "The Help." That suggests that nurses are just attendants who enforce minor rules and have time to sit around reading novels. In fact, nurses are college-educated professionals who work autonomously to improve patient outcomes, at least when they can in view of the understaffing that is now widespread--partly because of the kind of undervaluation found in this episode. Unfortunately, past episodes of Desperate Housewives have also reinforced nursing stereotypes. In the October 21, 2007 show, Gaby donned naughty nurse attire as a cover to rub lotion on her husband, to covertly heal a case of the crabs she had given him. And in the April 13, 2008 episode, the show presented a hospital nurse as a mousy, pathetic physician lackey who could be bribed into revealing sensitive patient information with free lunch at a French bistro, and who had time to leave the hospital mid-shift to eat that lunch. Please make amends for the damage Desperate Housewives has caused to nursing and avoid future use of nursing stereotypes. I suggest that you create episodes in which nurses actually play significant (i.e., life-saving) roles in the health care a patient receives. You can read more about who nurses are and what they do here: http://www.truthaboutnursing.org/faq/nursing_definition.html Thank you for your consideration.