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Images of nursing in the media
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Christina Aguilera Skechers shoe ad
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Pennzoil Motor Oil
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Nurse Action figure
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Jessica Rabbit Disney ad
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3 Wishes Lingerie
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Physician's Formula cosmetics ad
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Charles Cullen
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Miss Piggy nurse figurine |
Tag Body Spray commercial. Our analysis and the film clip.
Dentyne Ice commercial: Our analysis and the film clip.
Physicians are smart and commanding, nurses are peripheral subordinates (Caravan) or sex objects (Mentos).
Craign Barton's rap video: analysis and video in Quicktime or Windows media
Decker students "We're Bringing Nursing Back" analysis and the video.
August 18, 2008 -- Tonight's episode of TNT's police drama Saving Grace featured an impressive portrayal of a burn ICU nurse who projects advanced clinical skills in treating a six-year-old boy who has been horribly burned by his father. Nurse Angela gives key information about the boy's care to the show's lead character, Oklahoma City detective Grace Hanadarko, conveying that she has holistic health expertise. Angela also displays interpersonal skills; she cares deeply about the boy, yet is tough enough to handle the suffering she witnesses. Angela plays the central role in the boy's care, just as she would in real life. A physician appears briefly to remove a breathing tube, but Angela is the main point of contact for the detectives. And unlike a 2004 episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit with a sexual assault nurse character, this episode resists the urge to have Grace herself take the lead in the care of the crime victim. A few elements of the portrayal could have been better, including Angela's decision to talk about the likelihood of the boy's dying right in front of him. But the actresses playing Angela (Camille Saviola) and Grace (Holly Hunter) both do a great job in their interactions to support the overall themes, beyond what the script requires. "Are You An Indian Princess?" was written by Mark Israel and Roger Wolfson, and directed by Gwyneth Horder-Payton. more...and please join us in sending a letter of thanks to the show.
Also see:
"ER" film clips Nurses do the trivial work
Triage is trivial hand-holding and babysitting.
Why would anyone want to be a nurse? Could Abby really not think of a response to this?
Nurses anticipate physician stethoscope needs.
Nurses answer phones for physicians who matter.
Nurses are love interests and sex objects. They never date anyone but physicians even though physicians date non-nurses. Nurses are there to make physicians feel better. Physicians are "the best" and nurses are "hot."
Nurses fight the real patient advocates--med students!
Nurses are hired, fired and supervised by physicians.
Nurses fill the battle-axe role
Midnight in the Garden of Nurses and Murses
February 2007 -- Five recent episodes of "ER" that chronicle the short ED stint of nurse Ben Parker illustrate the NBC show's sometimes impressive--but still mostly inadequate--portrayal of nursing. See the analysis including many clips.Between the Boob and the Tube
September 28, 2006 -- Two nurses who actually get a few lines are utterly incompetent. One is a lactation consultant whose comments are idiotic and insensitive. The other nurse dismisses the concerns of Lockhart's mother Maggie about a critical heart monitor alarm. See the analysis including the clips.
Physicians do all the important work and get credit for the work that nurses do in real life.
Nothing more than a persistent illusion
September 13, 2007 -- Contains 8 film clips some on good nursing, physician nursing, and handmaiden nursing. see the full analysis...
Physicians defibrillate on "ER" even though nurses do it in real life.
Physicians provide emotional support and take the lead in psychosocial assessment
Pratt (physician) takes a patient to CT scan. He infuses blood in through the blood transfusion tubing and exposes himself to radiation so that he can hand-squeeze in a unit of blood. The whole premise of his heroism is ridiculous as hand-squeezing in blood is so much slower than using a pressure bag or level I fluid warmer and 20 seconds of this is not going to save anyone's life. The CT tech is monitoring the patient's blood pressure. All of this work is nursing work!
Who are these physicians talking to? How absurd that a physician would be first on this scene, with no nurses anywhere in sight until much later. In real life, the triage nurse would be first on the scene and would have to drag physicians by the hair to get them outside. Physicians call out all this work to be done--to no one--and as if saying it and getting it done were the same thing.
Physicians supervise the narcotics count?
No nurses are in this code, so the intern helpfully calls out how much epinephrine (and later fluids) this patient has had.
April 28, 2008 -- Tonight's episode of Fox's "House" seemed designed to placate nurses unhappy that the show has spent the last four seasons pretending nurses play no important role in hospital care. The show's isolated effort to make amends did not focus on what nurses actually do, but instead relied on a strike plotline which supposedly showed how bad things get when nurses are absent--much as "Grey's Anatomy" did in 2006. In this episode, House's team works to determine what is making the husband of one striker too nice. It includes a brief scene in which this nurse saves her husband's life by diagnosing a heart attack and performing CPR. We thank the show for this. Sadly, we never learn why the nurses are striking. And the only scene that seems to show the effects of the strike simply shows an overcrowded ED, and implies that physicians just have to work extra hard to make up for the absence of nurses--as if physicians can do everything nurses can. They can't. more, including a new film clip...
Physician: "Who diagnosed it?
Nurse: "He did!"
In this clip, the star of the show Greg House, brilliant physician is the patient. The nurse is ineffective bureaucrat, knowing nothing about the illnesses she certainly sees all day long. Heroic physician House diagnoses the problem that the nurse would have been all over already.
February 13, 2007 -- Tonight's episode of Fox's "House" included something rare: the brief appearance of a nurse character (Wendy) who, though hardly interesting, was a bit more than just a mute servant. See the analysis and many film clips.
"Yes, doctor."
"Right away."
"I was just trying to get a urine sample, and he went crazy!"
May 15, 2007 - -In tonight's episode of Fox's "House," the complete dialogue of nurse characters in the May 15 episode was: "Yes, doctor." "Right away." "I was just trying to get a urine sample, and he went crazy!" These few lines reflect the hospital drama's portrayal of nurses in bedside care, a vision of physician handmaidens with little technical knowledge who perform menial assistive tasks but panic in an emergency, relying on physicians to supply all thinking, expertise, and courage. The episode reinforces this vision with a few of the House character's typical expressions of contempt for nurses and nursing, as always delivered without challenge from the other characters or the show as a whole. One priceless moment finds House informing two nurses, without irony, that a patient the nurses can see is having a pronounced full-body seizure is in fact "having a seizure." See the analysis and 8 film clips...
"Did you just call me a nurse?"
"You're the pig who called Meredith a nurse. I hate you on principle."
Our concern is not so much the male intern's comment: "I hate nurses" that preceded the two quotes above. It is how the show handles that comment, effectively telling viewers that yeah, it is horrible to be a female physician and have the fortune of sharing your gender with the vast majority of nurses. And comparing an intern to a nurse is the most insulting thing you could ever do to a physician.
January 25, 2007 -- Attending physician Mark Sloane praises nurses as "helpful," "smart," and "already good at their jobs." Click to see the analysis including a clip.
September 28, 2006 -- Nurse as deer in the headlights and petty bureaucrat. See the analysis including a clip.
"Scrubs," lift us up where we belong
February 1, 2007 -- Tonight NBC's "Scrubs" told millions of viewers that nurses are handmaidens with low-skilled jobs, that physicians supervise nurses and can become nurse managers at will, that nursing is for women so men who do it should be mocked, and that physicians take the lead in skilled patient monitoring, though nurses actually do that. The episode does suggest vaguely that "head nurse" Carla Espinosa is needed. And nurse Laverne Roberts, who has often been presented as a lazy, disagreeable stereotype, takes a more active and realistic role here. But on the whole, Mike Schwartz's "His Story IV" is one of the worst "Scrubs" episodes ever for nursing. more, and see the five new film clips...
"Is that even a word?" September 26, 2007
"I love talking to midwifs" October 3, 2007
"Commit to the cake, man" October 10, 2007
"Vulva! Labia majus!" October 17, 2007
"Don't mock the midwife" October 24, 2007
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