Are You Nurse Jackie or Nurse Zoey?

[Nurse Beth]

I resisted watching Showtime's Nurse Jackie for a very long time. I'm not really a TV series person. Too much commitment. Plus I don't have Showtime. And past medical shows have usually disappointed.

But recently I watched my first episode of Nurse Jackie on Netflix. Within 2 weeks I had binge watched all seven seasons. I found the show so addictive and the storyline so compelling that I couldn't wait to watch each following episode. I'm still processing it and analyzing why it had such a hold on me.

Nurse Jackie is set in the emergency department of All Saints Hospital in New York city. The main character, Jackie, is an ED nurse, as is her perky protege, Zoey.

I got hooked because the main characters are nurses, the storyline is compelling, and Nurse Jackie herself is a train wreck. Edie Falco does such a phenomenal job of being Nurse Jackie that I feel as if I know her, that we could work side by side next shift. Or maybe I was hooked because of the secret vicarious thrill I got when Jackie mouths off to administrators and doctors (with good reason, mind you).

Categorized as a comedy/drama, it's a dark comedy and more drama than comedy. Warning- it's not PG. Not for everyone and not a feel-good Hallmark type series. (There's way more sex going on in that ED than any ED I've ever worked in).

The show is really about drug addiction. Jackie is a top performing ED nurse...and also a pill-popping addict. At first, no one knows except for Eddie, the Pharmacist, who supplies Jackie with pain pills and who incidentally is also having an affair with her.

As time goes on, Jackie's drug use increases and her world starts spinning out of control. Colleagues at work begin to suspect she is using. Fentanyl patches go missing. Narcotic counts are off. At home, Jackie's husband, Kevin, divorces her while their two daughters are hurt by her unpredictable behavior and begin to act out. The story goes on to show the high cost of addiction.

As soon as it aired back in 2009, the show was instantly controversial. Some nursing associations protested that a show featuring a nurse doing many of the truly shocking and harmful things Jackie does should be taken off the air.

But there's no denying Nurse Jackie is much more realistic than most medical shows involving nurses. It shows a new doctor who misdiagnoses a patient, despite Jackie's warning. As a result, the patient dies. There's trauma and drama in every episode, craziness that only ED nurses know too well. There's short-staffing and frequent flyers.

Drug use aside, Jackie is a committed clinician whose passion is helping patients. Then there's Zoey. Zoey follows Jackie everywhere, a newbie soaking in everything. You fall in love with charming Zoey and admire Jackie while being horrified at her behavior- the behavior of a user.

Personality-wise, there's a version of a Nurse Jackie and a Nurse Zoey on every nursing unit.

Nurse Jackie

Nurse Jackie is a drug addict who steals your heart. A sociopath and a saint. Nurse Jackie breaks the rules, she's irreverent and a rogue nurse at times...but only when it helps patients. On one episode, she performs an emergency needle decompression of a tension pneumothorax, saving the life of a cab driver. Completely out of nursing scope of practice, but there was no doctor available, and Jackie saved his life. What would you do?

She rules her ED. She's witty and willful. Bossy and biting. Cynical and compassionate.

Tough with a heart, she cares about each of her patients and fights for what they need.

She has zero work-life balance. A nurse to the core, her entire identity is based on being a nurse. She once said "if I'm not a nurse...I'm no one. I'm nothing." Sad. Outspoken and mouthy, she's brutally honest (except when she's lying :).

The Nurse Jackie on most every unit? They are the ultimate pro, the gruff charge nurse, the nurse everyone respects and looks up to. They even intimidate doctors.

Nurse Zoey

Nurse Zoey, Jackie's protege, is soft and self-effacing. She wears kitty scrubs. Sweet and spunky, she lacks Jackie's sharp edges. She's adorably quirky and in addition to starting her nursing career, she is moving out of her parent's house and dating a paramedic she met at All Saint's.

Unlike Jackie, who rarely filters herself, Zoey chooses her words carefully and tactfully. She is honest and sensitive. Nurse Zoey is becoming an excellent ED nurse in her own right under Jackie's tutelage but doesn't yet know how good she is.

Zoey is a best friend to Jackie to the end. She's loyal, supportive and refuses to believe anything negative about Jackie, her hero.

Is Nurse Zoey really just a younger Nurse Jackie? Idealistic and inexperienced?

Are you a Nurse Jackie or a Nurse Zoey? No doubt you, like most of us, are a complex person. Maybe you are a mix of both, a strong nurse with frailties.

And maybe that's one of the points of the show's writers.

[yakimandu]

I could not write her off as bad or "sociopathic"

I could, because that's what a serious drug addict becomes, to the detriment of everyone around them and themselves, because obtaining the drug becomes the top priority.

[Pricker]

I absolutely Love this show!!!! I'm more of a Nurse Jackie attitude wise towards other staff but I have Zoey tendencies especially towards my patients. In some ways don't we all become Mr. Hyde/Dr. Jeckell or in this case Jackie/Zoey good nurse/bad nurse but at least in my case not to the extreme level Jackie takes it to. Under our scrubs we're all different personalities depending on each circumstance. It's what sets nursing apart from other fields we must be ever changing and adaptable in our work, because in a moment anything can happen.

[Sober1]

You are right. In addiction we are selfish and self centered. The last thing I ever wanted to be was addicted to alcohol and drugs like my family who I despised for their addictions. I was bright, determined, and successful at getting as far away and being the opposite of them as possible. I didn't start drinking until I was forty. By then I thought the gene missed me and I was safe to drink like the others at the NP drug rep meetings. I had a choice whether to drink or not at that time. Eventually that gene was switched on and I lost control. I no longer had a choice. I couldn't not use. I was ashamed of violating my pledge and completely frustrated at my powerlessness and inability to conquer addiction as I'd conquered everything else. All the papers I'd written on addiction in school did not protecte. Knowledge is useless. Addiction is centered in the primitive part of the brain that trumps the frontal lobe every time. Self-reliance (my specialty) is worse than useless, it is counter-productive. It's been a long, hard struggle working to completely re-form my self-reliance. The first, nor the second rehab worked. Still I persevere in my third. I thank God I chose not to have children. I never wanted to be like my mom. The first 164 pages of the AA Big Book and recent research are good sources of info on the how's and why's of the obsession and compulsion. For "allergy" read abnormal reaction. The substances are not our problem, they are our solution to an underlying thinking problem. Just for today I am sober. Namaste

[Opra]

While i was on a flight from UK to USA i saw Nurse Jackie for the first time some years ago, I was quite schocked that she was shown snorting drugs at work.The next episode i saw she was having sex in a cupboard that was a little bit too mush for me . I have never watched another and don't think would recomend it.Working as a nurse is hard enough with out making programs like this.

Yes we know its part of life these days but i don't need to see this when i am off duty.

[combinate]

Discussion about the degree to which the Nurse Jackie characters reflect real medical personnel got me searching for a quote. I did not find it, but it goes something like this:

"People write fiction to get at the truth, and some write non-fiction to hide the truth"

Here are some wonderful related quotes that did shake out:

https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/01/27/famous-authors-on-truth-vs-fiction/

The addiction tragedies discussed here are heart wrenching. May we find some cures, and may we find better ways to deal with the social problems in the meantime (maybe like in Portugal, for example). Author and doctor Gabor Mate believes that addiction is linked to deficient nurturing in early childhood development. He apparently has some success to treat the deficit in adults. I haven't read his books yet; maybe someone else here has better information; but you can easily find info about his work (including interviews) on the internet.

[Farawyn]

Discussion about the degree to which the Nurse Jackie characters reflect real medical personnel got me searching for a quote. I did not find it, but it goes something like this:

"People write fiction to get at the truth, and some write non-fiction to hide the truth"

Here are some wonderful related quotes that did shake out:

https://www.brainpickings.org/2012/01/27/famous-authors-on-truth-vs-fiction/

The addiction tragedies discussed here are heart wrenching. May we find some cures, and may we find better ways to deal with the social problems in the meantime (maybe like in Portugal, for example). Author and doctor Gabor Mate believes that addiction is linked to deficient nurturing in early childhood development. He apparently has some success to treat the deficit in adults. I haven't read his books yet; maybe someone else here has better information; but you can easily find info about his work (including interviews) on the internet.

No, let's not go back to blaming Mommy.

[Get2theChoppa]

I like "Getting On" on HBO, and see myself more like Did Ortley. Oh, Ms. Birdy, what will the show be like without you?

[combinate]

It's much more general than "blaming mommy". Dr. Mate has talked about his own struggle with ADD, compulsive working, and compulsive shopping, and how ADD/OCD may have come about: He posits that the huge stresses on his mother in Hungary, during constant bombing of WWII, while he was in the womb (He's in his 70s) played a significant role in his premature birth and various heath struggles (again including some ADD and OCD). His "theory" (not sure if he is funded as a research investigator) is not really about his own case, as he has studied and practiced successfully for many decades. The bombs/warfare were coming from elsewhere (across the world even). Some mothers don't behave and nurture their children well, but there are any number of contributing factors (abuse, addiction, poverty, disease ... warfare{I heard there is some of that in the world}). Mothers need nurturing to then nurture the child. Mate discusses addiction mechanisms from the womb, throughout life, in the individual, and across society. It's about understanding, not blaming or punishing.

[Farawyn]

Doesn't sound like that.

[elijahvegas, ASN, RN, EMT-P]

I like "Getting On" on HBO, and see myself more like Did Ortley. Oh, Ms. Birdy, what will the show be like without you?

I watched the American version of getting on, and I was actually mortified. Keep me away from any facility that even remotely resembles this

[dannibeeRN]

[spoilerS]

i wholeheartedly disagree. Jackie was flawed yes, but definitely to the point of sociopathic. I actually have watched the entire series, although it was some time ago, i think the most abhorrent deed she committed was, when she felt threatened by a fellow addict that threatened to confront her enablers that she wasn't doing well, so jackie decided to convince this woman that they were friends, got her to relapse, and promised that if they both go on one last bender together, they could enroll in a rehab together to get clean. at the last minute when they arrived at the clinic, nurse jackie lied and said she was admitting her delusional friend for help and pretty much left her on ice at the clinic alone.

This act in my opinion went beyond just all of the other things that she had done, because all of the questionable and unethical things she had done in the past were mostly self-destructive, and in the name of scoring more drugs. At this point in the series she actually sought to destroy someone else that crossed her (who actually was trying to help).

Not to deter from the main focus of the OP's question, but i personally felt like that was worth pointing out. Jackie, like so many, became overrun by her severe addiction, but in my opinion it made her just a terrible person in every aspect of her life thereafter. Many people stuck their necks out for her, and she took advantage of each and every single one of them, got a couple people fired or near-fired, almost got her fiance arrested, and the only time she would even seem remotely remorseful, was when she was cornered and confronted head on. That lack of remorse which was direct result of her actions, to me is what signals sociopathic tendencies.

THIS was the part in the series where I knew Jackie was gone and couldn't be helped. Her addiction had totally consumed her. It gave me chills when she tricked her sponsor and turned her in to rehab so that she would stay out of Jackie's way. Nurse Jackie was a GREAT series but I wish each episode was longer than 30 mins. The drama and laughs were plentiful and I loved every minute of it!

[qnmimi]

Definitely I'd fall more under the Nurse Jackie. I am loud, and opinionated, and not afraid to do what is right with my patients. Fortunately for me my life is minus all the drama and drug addiction. BTW, I have used a stethescope for over 30 years, are nurses truly so obsessive to think you can put it around your neck "backwards"????WTH????