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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
Except she realized how important nurses are, including herself, and decided not to go.
About 42 years ago I briefly dated a senior in nursing school. She told me about her classes in pharmacology. What stuck out was she said doctors get very little education in drugs and drug interactions. She said when a pharmaceutical company comes to the hospital and recommended drug X to treat disease Y, that’s often all a doctor needed to know (other than the amount of his kick-back perhaps). It was up to the nurses to understand whether drug X was indeed better than old drug B or whether drug X would adversely interact with another drug the patient was taking for another issue. Nurses like her had to know our chart and be our advocate. Fifteen years later I remembered what she said when my Dad almost died from the interactions of two prescriptions given by two oblivious doctors for different issues (high blood pressure was one of them) without cross-consultation. I have been pretty healthy, but I have always appreciated the angels of mercy standing by my bedside more than the hit-and-run doctors who inspire the TV shows. COVID has reinforced my opinions about doctors versus nurses. I know there are always exceptions to my very broad brush strokes, but doctors (especially these days) seem to be most worried about covering their own asses. Who wants to see a show about that? Thank God we have nurses to cover ours – literally and figuratively.
Of course, that’s not what the doctor-oriented TV shows have ever been about. Not reality. Sometimes they deal with administrators covering their own asses, often at the expense of doctors, nurses, and patients. But rarely if ever is it the doctors who are the bad guys.
There’s a few forays into it with current medical dramas. You know. Corporate medicine is evil, the administrators are evil, the licensing agencies are evil…
Gray’s Anatomy had a plotline about it.
I believe The Good Doctor also did.
I’m pretty certain it was a fixture on The Resident.
In any case, there’s usually one money-minded and greedy doctor in the mix.
Back in 1994 I did radio interviews with a couple of writers on ER, John Wells who ran the show and Dr. Lance Gentile, a working ER physician at the time and also the writer of the outstanding Blizzard episode (season 1, episode 10 — see it!)
Both spoke of the program’s commitment to realism and accuracy. Medical stories carried most of the first year, which established the program as the top rated show on television. (Later on it leaned more heavily toward systemic problems of the health care system, AIDS, and the increasingly extreme personal challenges of the regulars.)
A standing panel of nurses met regularly with the staff to better inform the stories and production.
Life-and-death stakes occupations made for fine television shows back in the day. In the mid-1990’s, many showrunners hired working experts in those fields to enhance realism, and the target audience responded positively. In the current century, those with final say usually try to shoehorn the prevaling themes and values of the Hollywood liberal elites into everything.
Which means that a “reboot” of ER would have Dr Ross (George Clooney) going after Dr Carter (Noah Wyle) instead of nurse Carol Hathaway (Julianna Margulies). And Dr Greene (Anthony Edwards) would be having naughty dreams about Jerry, the desk clerk (Abraham Benrubi).
It’s one reason that Gray’s has become unwatchable. I used to watch it after work and laugh at the silliness.
But now it is all about illegal immigration, universal healthcare, The Man, trans-rights(because Bisexual, Gay, and Disabled wasn’t enough), and non-binary inclusion.
It’s removed from story. It’s now just checking all the woke boxes.
I stopped watching pretty early, then again, I only STARTED watching because of Katherine Heigl, which turned out to be insufficient cause anyway.
My mother started her nursing career, after graduating with her B.N., as a public health service nurse in Philadelphia. This was the late 1950s, early 1960s, and nurses walked the streets of the projects, visiting tenements to provide the only healthcare service in the community. This was before the drug gangs took over, so old men sat on the steps outside keeping an eye out for troublemakers and the community saw the nurses as “our nurse.”
So, what is the show title? The nurses called themselves “streetwalkers for the City of Philadelphia.” That would be a punchy title for a period piece series on Prime or other streaming service.
These days they would probably be streetwalkers, and the nurse uniforms would just be to divert suspicion.
There’s already been a show like that, except it was set in London. It’s named Call the Midwife, and it seems to be the most true-to-life series about nursing that I’ve seen. Of course, I wasn’t a visiting nurse in 1950’s London, so maybe I’m way off. I’d completely forgotten about it until I saw your comment.