getting sick of it.

[Buckyxj]

Well since I became a nurse a couple months ago I have been asked at least 5000 times "Why didn't you want to become a doctor?" its just irritating. I have two small kids and by the time I would be out of school they would be in their late teens thats why... anyway

another question is is there a bridge program from nurse to paramedic? I used to be a EMT-I but let my license expire like four years ago. Do I just have to take the class over or what?

[rn/writer, RN]

TV is TV. I'm watching a show about this guy in New York who hangs out with this girl who he used to date but now they're best friends, along with his other male and some really weird guy across the hall...

Some people forget it's TV tho, and we end up with people thinking that's how nurses work, or that's how easy it is to ID a criminal from a fingerprint smudge... I love the crime labs on CSI... I'm sure they really look like that.

Yes, loads of glass walls and shiny metal that darn near glow in the dramatic blue lighting.

Don't forget the Jiffy Pop DNA results. And, one of my favorites, a picture of the perp from the reflection in the vic's pupils taken from an ATM camera. I'm sure that happens all the time.

[teeituptom, BSN, RN]

TV is TV. Very few professions get accurate treatment, in part, because most jobs have hours of humdrum existence, punctuated by a few minutes of excitement. Television writers and producers cherry-pick the high times and invent the rest.

None of the docs I know think House is accurate, except for the medical knowledge. They're kind of in awe over somebody making the scientific aspect of medicine look so cool. Oh, and the attending's contempt for the underlings--that they've seen plenty of. But, no, they don't feel it's representative of how hospitals really function.

Watch a show because you like it (House is one of my favorites), or don't watch it because you don't like it. I wouldn't lose much sleep over true-to-life portrayals because, a) there just aren't that many (if any!) out there, and b) the makers of TV shows aren't worried about such criticism if the show is doing well, and care even less if it isn't.

I cant watch any show with a vicodin popping drug addicted role model. So I have blocked that show from my home.

[mvanz9999, RN]

Yes, loads of glass walls and shiny metal that darn near glow in the dramatic blue lighting.

Don't forget the Jiffy Pop DNA results. And, one of my favorites, a picture of the perp from the reflection in the vic's pupils taken from an ATM camera. I'm sure that happens all the time.

Oh, that made me laugh! Great laugh to the end of the miserable day after the 4th off!

[BeachBayNurse]

Do you think television contributes to this perception?

When I watch shows like "House" I notice that the doctors do everything, from starting an IV to performing an MRI. Nurses, CNAs, and allied health people are almost never shown. Do you think this gives the public the impression that doctors do most of the work?

One thing I noticed: An MD I know said he considers "House" to be quite accurate. A retired RN I know says it's anything but.

YES! Exactly, I am just a year out of college, but I knew a large amount of peers that were pre-med. I often got the condescending attitude that I was going to be "just" a nurse, and as doctors, they would "get to do all of the hands on work." I think that many of my peers and also relatives that discourgaed me from being a nurse had absolutely no idea what a doctor's life is like. If there is time for group lunches and affairs in closets on Grey's Anatomy, then that is what doctors must do! I just feel fortunate I did not spend the time and years of my life on med school to find out it was not for me. It is also quite interesting that out of all the pre-meds I know, only one has made it to medical school.

[Roy Fokker, BSN, RN]

---I wish that one day, one of us can say something like that.---

Gimme some time, I'm workin' on it