Over the past decade, we have seen a dramatic increase in drama and reality series that have been based around medical practice:
Scrubs, Nip/Tuck, House, Greys Anatomy, Hopkins, True Life in the ER - just to name a few..
Has anyone noticed this effecting the nurses you have known in school or have been employed with? Have they said "this is nothing like I thought it would be from TV" or noticed that irrelevant drama from TV has been a motivating factor in an individuals decision to pursue nursing?
Just curious how others have perceived this. I think since its been a huge part of the mainstream media today that it is bound to have an effect on the careers of medical clinicians.
Specializes in NICU, PICU, PCVICU and peds oncology.
... and since when do they clean out a storage room to put a patient into?
We've done that on our unit, and it happens in pretty much every acute care hospital in our area and many others around the country. It's called the Full Capacity Protocol. Patients are put into tub rooms, storage rooms, sunrooms and crammed in between patients in semi-private rooms. On our unit, the former x-ray viewing room became a storage room when we moved to digital x-rays and is now a two patient room, complete with two wall-mounted cardiorespiratory monitors and two computer terminals. The fact that there's no door on the room or that it isn't big enough to swing a dead mouse around in doesn't matter.
My favorite show of all time is ER...i still watch re-runs everyday. They did such a good job on the show of showing all sides of working in a hospital. They showed a sensitive side, nurses view, the doctors view, and also they did a very good job of showing the political side of health care. And they're very realistic.
I'll grant that ER at least HAD nurses who had names. BUT... two of their strongest nurse characters were more interested in becoming doctors than they were being nurses. Another post has mentioned Sam's son having the run of the ER instead of being home with a sitter. How many of the nurses ended up in sexual relationships with their physician coworkers versus let's say those YOU work with? And dramatic license dictated that they have the staff move from crisis to crisis to keep the viewers from being bored. Not many ERs are running at Mach 10 every minute of the day, every day.
A young lady of my acquaintance recently told me that she is going to go to nursing school because she got several seasons of Grey's Anatomy for Christmas. She'd never seen the show before but now she's all gung ho about being a nurse. I tried to explain to her that although all of the patient-related stories have an element of truth in them, they're sensational, unique cases that did not happen in one single hospital over a 13 week arc and that she might work as a nurse for 40 years and never see anything unusual. That didn't sway her at all. She'll be disappointed with reality, I think.
IMHO, many of the vintage television hospital "dramas" did a better job of rounding out their nursing characters. Certianly much more than one sees today, then again televison shows then were cheaper to produce and weren't in competition with cable.
Old shows such as "Emergency" "Trapper John MD" and "Nurse" (a short lived series), and even MASH, often had plot lines that revolved around their nurses, and gave a little insight as to what RNs had to deal with.
Few case in points:
One episode of "Emergency" dealth with Head Nurse Dixie Carter being made DON, when she really wished to reamin in the ER. Her replacement, newly promoted to head nurse couldn't cope with the job, especially things that looked easy in theory, such as scheduling, but were harder than most think.
Trapper John, MD had a fiesty DON and more than a few nurses, who at times not only stood their ground, but won a few rounds against doctors. One episode has a female doctor (Elaine Stritch) nearly blowing a gasket when the hospital allowed RNs with advanced education to start writing scripts and other things formerly strictly MD work.
As for charting, again, the older shows often showed nurses either charting, giving meds, answering call bells (remember those?), scrubbing in the OR, and the like. Even Head Nurse Jessie, and nurse Bobbie Spencer were shown charting on "General Hospital".
Think the major problem with most hospital dramas, both vintage and current is they most always center around medicine, that is doctors. From Ben Casey to ER, you have doctors, doctors, doctors. Old doctors, handsome doctors, young goodlooking doctors, doctors from hell, doctors with large egos, wise old doctors, and the lot. And as we all know (sadly) anything a doctor does is automatically more interesting than nursing.
One thing most all these hospital dramas have in common, is that there will always be at least one "hot" doctor (Dr.Gonzo, Dr. John Carter (played by Noah Wyle, whose mother happens to be a RN), and one nurse who is at least "pretty" or sexually suggestive. MASH had Major "Hotlips" Houlihan, Trapper John, MD had a nurse named "Ripples" (one assumes this referred to how she filled out her uniform).
Oh and by the way, anyone who thinks a there aren't girls who become nurses only in the hopes of nabbing a doctor, think again. Though the numbers are probably smaller today than years past, it still goes on. Hey, if one wants to fish, you have to go where the fish are. *LOL*
I personally love real life medical shows like Trauma: Life in the ER etc. I love fictional medical dramas too. That being said, they never figured into my decision to become a nurse. I also like to watch soap operas like General Hospital (guilty pleasure I know) but that doesn't mean that a life as mob guy's girlfriend looks appealing to me for example. It just means I like watching GH lol!
NotReady4PrimeTime, RN
5 Articles; 7,358 Posts
We've done that on our unit, and it happens in pretty much every acute care hospital in our area and many others around the country. It's called the Full Capacity Protocol. Patients are put into tub rooms, storage rooms, sunrooms and crammed in between patients in semi-private rooms. On our unit, the former x-ray viewing room became a storage room when we moved to digital x-rays and is now a two patient room, complete with two wall-mounted cardiorespiratory monitors and two computer terminals. The fact that there's no door on the room or that it isn't big enough to swing a dead mouse around in doesn't matter.
I'll grant that ER at least HAD nurses who had names. BUT... two of their strongest nurse characters were more interested in becoming doctors than they were being nurses. Another post has mentioned Sam's son having the run of the ER instead of being home with a sitter. How many of the nurses ended up in sexual relationships with their physician coworkers versus let's say those YOU work with? And dramatic license dictated that they have the staff move from crisis to crisis to keep the viewers from being bored. Not many ERs are running at Mach 10 every minute of the day, every day.
A young lady of my acquaintance recently told me that she is going to go to nursing school because she got several seasons of Grey's Anatomy for Christmas. She'd never seen the show before but now she's all gung ho about being a nurse. I tried to explain to her that although all of the patient-related stories have an element of truth in them, they're sensational, unique cases that did not happen in one single hospital over a 13 week arc and that she might work as a nurse for 40 years and never see anything unusual. That didn't sway her at all. She'll be disappointed with reality, I think.