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Nurses: The TV Show
I often think that a TV show about actual nurses would play well.
Not the TV show about nurses that Jada Pinkett Smith did, but a show about what actual nurses do and live and feel. I can’t help but think that the drama of actual life, being yelled at by physicians over things not in our control, being yelled at by family members, finding patients hiding drugs in their bed and overdosing while admitted, finding patient family members unlocking syringe boxes to steal used syringes for whatever, and families being elated at the last moments of recovery and lucidity right before death…
I feel like it might be good.
Throw in some dementia patients saying and doing odd things, nurses being stupid and dating the wrong people because they’re overly kind about things, family members demanding that because “you’re a nurse!” you should be the primary caregiver for aging family, and administration rounding to give out candy and talk about the various ways in which you should “do better” in charting, rounding/whatever….
There should be enough drama and comedy for everyone.
So why am I the one bringing this up? Why isn’t Hollywood all over this? We don’t need a non-binary member of staff, we treat plenty of them. We have gay, straight, single, divorced, engaged. Young, old, retiring. We have everything in abundance.
Why isn’t this being captured in any actual TV? Why are doctors the only movers and shakers? Why are nurses either accessories or only NPs or COOs (see Hawthorne, mentioned above)? Why are bedside nurses not, well, interesting enough?
Well, hello Hollywood.
I’m available for consultancy. I can tell you things that would blow your mind.
Of course, they’d likely be cable-tv only or straight to Netflix.
…but I’m here.
And I’ve got the details.
Published in General
What about Scrubs?
I know a medical doctor that swore by that show.
Doctors.
While it did have some stuff about nurses, there’s very little. I’d love to see a nurse-centric show.
ER did quite a bit with nurses. So did St Elsewhere, and to a lesser degree Chicago Hope.
There was a show called Nurse, starring Michael Learned as I recall. The show Mercy was mostly about nurses, starring Taylor Schilling as an experienced nurse and Michelle Trachtenberg as a new arrival, among others.
Mercy Point even had an android nurse.
Granted they aren’t still on, but they did exist. I’m not sure it makes sense to maybe expect a show about nurses to be on every year, maybe a new show with new cast members each time…
I think there’s a difference between “did a bit with nurses” and was nurse-centric.
ER wax running from 1994 on to 2009. Mercy, in 2009 which ran for 1 pitiful season, also focused on nurses… with their relationships with doctors.
Then we have Mercy Point with android nurses? The ultimate in slave labor and you’re saying that, gee, not every year can have a “nurse TV show”?
It’s 2022.
The last “nurse show” if it can be called that, was over a decade ago.
But please, do tell how nurses are overrepresented, realistically, on TV?
Real hospitals are funnier.
Sadly🙄
“Nurse Jackie?”
She’s talking about nurses, not doctors. According to Scrubs, nurses are only good for juggling bedpans and making coffee. And a male nurse dating a female doctor? Fuggetaboutit.
Nurse Jackass, about an incompetent, lying, cheating, thieving drug addict? No.
I’ll disagree with you on that point. They had two strong nurses in that show. One of whom they killed and the other was primarily used as a love interest. They were mostly used as plot devices in reference to the doctors: love interests, women who kept the men in check, women (vs. men). There were a few “hey, you wouldn’t get far without the nurses!” remarks and one episode where they regularly sabotaged JD after he said something dumb.
But other than that, Scrubs was, once again a doctor centric show.
Oh sure.
Let’s also talk about Ratched then?
Noticing a difference yet? The doctor centric shows are medical dramas where the doctors are heroes. The nurse centric shows are about NPs (basically doctors) or about anti-hero/antagonistic characters. And there’s about five of them.
Doctor centric shows:
Chicago Hope
General Hospital
ER
Gray’s Anatomy
House
Code Black
Doogie Howser, MD
St. Elsewhere
Transplant
Chicago Med
The Good Doctor
Untold Stories of the ER
Nurse Centric TV Shows:
HawthoRNe (cancelled)
Virgin River (about a NP, on Netflix)
Nurse Jackie
Ratched
Nurses (which is painful to watch, Canadian, and probably cancelled)
I was a volunteer in a hospital; I mainly refilled the patients water jugs and cleaned out the refrigerator of dated food and added fresh stuff from the kitchen. But the nurses really liked me because unlike other volunteers, I would do things other volunteers wouldn’t. Nothing illegal. But like leave the area to go to the pharmacy to pick up things. Repeatedly, a volunteer would say, “not my job.” I couldn’t believe it. At times, I felt dizzy watching the nurses zoom from place to place (San Clemente, CA) and wished I could do more. As a volunteer. It would have been to hard to be a nurse!
Anywhere you go, there are people who do that. If it isn’t clinical, chances are that it *could* be their job. They just don’t want it to be.
I was reminded that in ER, the *one nurse* (who was a love interest for a doctor, natch) became a doctor. Because reasons. It was super irritating. Few nurses, after 10 years, say “hey! I should go to med school!”
But, you know, they wanted to show *progress* and George Clooney had already left the show.
You forgot about MASH. The nurses were mainly sexual objects and the head nurse was an authoritative not so nice person. The first few years of the show were pretty hilarious.
That wasn’t my point. But it does seem rather naive or something to want TV shows, movies, or whatever that focus on whatever our own job happens to be. Those decisions are made based on what people are more likely to watch, or even pay money to see.
Actually that happened on ER, they were married too, at least for a while.
NBC aired a Canadian show called Nurses (Nurses – NBC.com). Billed as a Grey’s Anatomy but in Canada and with Nurses, it doesn’t really live up to that, but does address some of the issues they face. We have enjoyed it, if only to see some Canadian TV and its differences from US TV. Oddly, one of the male nurses is a childhood leukemia survivor and still has to take drugs to stay in remission. Evidently these drugs aren’t covered by the beneficence of Canadian health care because he turns to illegal means to acquire them.
It isn’t that my job needs to be represented, per se. It’s that my job is represented as being that of a *doctor*. Doctors do all the work and have all the drama, whereas in real life it isn’t like that at all. Nursing is misrepresented regularly.
TV shows are made based on a number of things.
Do you think a bunch of people demanded to see fishing, ala The Deadliest Catch? Or ice semi trucks driving, ala Ice Road Truckers?
Producers and networks often tell the viewer what to watch and go from there.
My point is more that a well made TV show about nursing (not even ER nursing) would likely be a big hit if it were done correctly. Not that there *must* be a nurse tv show.
If they want a realistic show, they should call it “Where’s my doctor?”. You know I’ve spent enough time in the hospital over the last few years to know something about it. Doctors round once a day; half the time your actual doctor doesn’t even come with them, it’s someone from his team instead. Nurses are there 24 hours.
What would you call a show about real life nurses? Compassionate Angels and Incompetent Bitches?
That just might sell.
It might be an easy sell on Skinemax. :-)
As other commenters have indicated, it’s been done. St Elsewhere really did cover the tension between nurses and doctors, and included a union walkout.
The 1980’s, when it was shown, was a time when nurses were starting to be given more formal responsibility independent of the direct supervision of physicians.
St Elsewhere broke the mold on the previous medical shows, including soap operas like General Hospital.
And while ER, which did get high marks by practicing nurses of the time, did focus more on doctors, the nurses in the show did get considerable recognition.
I’m not against yet another television show about the nursing profession, as long as it doesn’t come down to “nurses good, doctors bad” which is a risk when you focus just on nurses. And “nurses good, doctors bad” is not reality, anymore than “enlisted good, officers bad” is in the military context.
Also, on St Elsewhere, one of the doctors was a serial rapist, and one of the nurses killed him.
Tonight’s episode: Rectal Morphine Suppository. Soundtrack by the Rolling Stones.
There was a series called The Nurses starring Zena Bethune on CBS in the early 1960’s. It was shot in New York.
So are a lot people.
Hm.
“Crazy People and the Patients They Care For”? “We’re All Crazy Here: Life on the Neuro Floor”?
But nurses aren’t angels and incompetent bitches. It’s more like, “Thank God, I’m Pretty Sure No One Died Because of Me…Today”.
I believe it got high marks because, for once, a nurse was an actual participant vs just a sexual object. I do not think it was because of great inclusion or anything nurse-centric.
Also, I watched ER. I’m not so young that it was not in my time. And I recall, even then, how upset I was (and, as you seem to recall nurses’ feelings) and all nurses were, when Nurse Hathaway decided to go to med school.
Being minorly included is revolutionary when previously being ignored. But again, look at any current shows.
I should point out HBO’s “Getting On”, a verson of the UK show about the dying elderly at a skilled nursing floor. That is possibly the *most* nurse centric TV show.
Weird duplicate. Apologies.