The most accurate portrayal of nurses in media?

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I love talking to nurses about medical dramas and tv shows and am curious to hear your thoughts!

Please do not suggest "hawthorne" "mercy" or "nurse jackie" as accurate portrayals of nurses! For obvious reasons! lol

I think the winner is still E.R, the show always portrayed nurses as smart, under appreciated, under paid, skilled clinicians who got the job done! I like that E.R always showed nurses actually performing nursing duties whereas in House and Grey's the Doctors apparently don't need us as they can do everything including giving meds and cleaning up dirty patients! The most accurate nursing portrayal in E.R was when a trauma rolled in, the rooms always had more nurses then docs! I hate seeing shows and movies where Doctors do it all!

Would be greatto hear from some of you...

Love this website where we get to celebrate and be proud of our profession!

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I would def have to say the show "Scrubs", its spot on! lol no but I have to agree with you on E.R.

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:redbeathe Lavern all day every day

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Specializes in Med/Surg.

I agree I didn't watch E.R much but I remember seeing, it was accurate. As far as Mercy went I thought some of the dilemmas that they went through resembled real life nursing and some of the skills, unfortunately all the doctor nurse relationships and alcoholism kind of overshadowed it. I like house because it shows things more realistically as far as medical tasks go, but the doctors have training from MRI's to Intravenous sticks really? When have you ever seen a doctor insert an IV at the bedside or draw blood?:rolleyes: In code situations on house too, he is always yelling for the nurses like they are garbage. You are right nurses are the most involved in codes doing several of the tasks.

:anpom:

I have been to several codes, but only had to rapid my patients and get them to higher levels of care "knock on wood" I am ACLS certified but it has been so long since my training and working on a general medical floor we never really see them. Most patients who die are DNR's. I think a lot of shows over dramatize certain aspects of nursing and take away from what we really do. I wish a show would come out again that would clearly demonstrate who we are. It seems shows based on real people have not had good ratings lately though and are getting axed after one season.

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Your spot on with Mercy! I also felt that I couldn't warm to the characters on that show.. As for Nurse Jackie I watch it for entertainment value, not for the accuracy of the nursing staff. The most inaccurate thing about that show is how ridiculously tight Jackie's scrubs are!! What nurse would wear painted on scrubs like that! haha. Your right House would yell pout at Nurses like they were garbage but some senior docs actually are like that! I thought Hawthorne was too much like a soap opera...

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Have you guys seen The Truth About Nursing? It's a non-profit that works to try to educate the public about the nursing profession. They analyze television shows (and movies) and write really sophisticated analyses about them. Here's the list of shows http://www.truthaboutnursing.org/media/tv/ and their star ratings. Hate to tell you guys this, but Nurse Jackie comes out on top! Check them out.

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Very interesting website!

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Yeah, it's great. You've got to send some letters to Hollywood. Here's one for Grey's Anatomy. http://www.truthaboutnursing.org/media/tv/greys.html

And check out their action page, how everyone can get involved http://www.truthaboutnursing.org/action/

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