What is it I do again???????????

Nurses General Nursing

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I watched an episode of Scrubs, and it was quite upsetting. In it the Intern makes the nurse feel lowly for being a nurse and even raves at her "I will be the doctor and you just be the nurse" and throughout she was portrayed as just standing around waiting for an order, and attempting to repeatedly prove her intelligence. One bizzare comment that was a little disturbing, the doctor asks the nurse if she had learned of photography in college and she responds by telling her sob story about not going to college. So where her degree came from is anybody's guess.

I think messages like these only perpetuate the public's misconception of what it is a nurse is and does exactly. So tell me, what do we do, what sets us apart from the MD, what constitutes a nurse?

Originally posted by JBudd

Sometimes I get called Doctor (gee, am I too authoritative?)

Nah, just means you're confident in how you do your job and in what you know, and it shows :)

Hey, where in New Mexico are you?

Specializes in CV-ICU.

I don't care to watch any medical shows on TV (and my family won't let me watch them anyways since I'm always yelling at the TV because they don't portray nurses correctly), so it sounds likeTV writers still don't know what the heck they are talking about when it comes to nurses.

i have watched that show scrubs from the beginning, and i think they portray nurses as very intelligent people. they show them giving doctors important information about the patients, and working at bedsides (although i have yet to figure out if that 'unit' is an ER or ICU or what exactly....) it is critical care apparently. nurses look like compassionate, intelligent partners to the doctors (to me at least LOL) and even though they may take some poetic license for the sake of the TV audience, this show is a darn sight better than many others with nurses. and the jokes are hysterical to me. there was another thread about this show not too long ago, too.

hope all are having a good day!!!

Don't kid yourselves. We are taught from Day One to read, interpret, and carry out doctors' orders. They go to school for 8-12 years. We have to be educated to the extent it takes to understand what they are talking about. Anyway you look at it we are the "doctors' assistants". You all can call it anything you want.

What is it we do? We put doctors' orders into action. If we had fewer patients, we would nurse, nurture, care for them, listen to them, provide TLC. Administration has no interest in your listening/nurturing skills. They want to know if you are knowledgeable enough to do what the doctor has ordered

If you focus your shift on checking the doctors orders, verifying everything has been done correctly, getting the lab reports, diagnostic exam reports, x-rays etc. back in the chart so the doctor can see them when he rounds, you will be doing 1/2 your job. And also, check with the patient to see how the doctors orders have affected him. And phone the doc if necessary if you figure out the outcomes may not be what the doc desired. Do this and you'll be a "great nurse" and stay outa trouble.

I have watched just about every episode of scrubs. generally their portrayal of nurses isn't half bad. Occasionaly they miss big time. I felt this episode was great, it showed that people, doctors can become ignorant and snobby with experience (not all of them though) But the doc did learn from his mistake, and realize that the nurse is a asset to the staff. From the begginging she has been a great resource for all the docs. They hit a miss when they said she didn't go to college, I know their existed in house nuring programs in hospitals, but I was under the impression that they no longer existed. :coollook: so how did she become a nurse???They hit another miss a while back with coffee nurse, all she did in the show was socialize and serve coffe to the docs, where oh where did she get time to do that. She was fired, then rehired because one of the doc's wanted his coffee. I enjoy the show and keep it mind that it is a comedy, and has potrayed most professions in a disrespectfull light, that might not refelct reality, what can you say about janitors or female doctors after this show ???

Happy TV time

yea, the evil janitor!:chuckle love the character.

I think that Scrubs shows nurses in a better light than ER ever did.

At least on Scrubs they show nurses actualy doing some procedures and sometimes knowing more than the docs.

On ER they're just "extras".

Originally posted by prn nurse

Don't kid yourselves. We are taught from Day One to read, interpret, and carry out doctors' orders. They go to school for 8-12 years. We have to be educated to the extent it takes to understand what they are talking about. Anyway you look at it we are the "doctors' assistants". You all can call it anything you want.

What is it we do? We put doctors' orders into action. If we had fewer patients, we would nurse, nurture, care for them, listen to them, provide TLC. Administration has no interest in your listening/nurturing skills. They want to know if you are knowledgeable enough to do what the doctor has ordered

If you focus your shift on checking the doctors orders, verifying everything has been done correctly, getting the lab reports, diagnostic exam reports, x-rays etc. back in the chart so the doctor can see them when he rounds, you will be doing 1/2 your job. And also, check with the patient to see how the doctors orders have affected him. And phone the doc if necessary if you figure out the outcomes may not be what the doc desired. Do this and you'll be a "great nurse" and stay outa trouble.

Thanks for the thought-provoking response. My response was based on what I learned in school and my perception of what a good nurse ought to be; yours has a definite real-world spin to it. And you know what? I think you're right.....that is how it IS :o in practice --- as far as the suits are concerned, that is our job.

And I wonder, is that difference in perception why we can't keep nurses at the bedside?

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Scrubs makes me want to hurl. Stupid as hell and twice as insaulting. Who watches this crap and related to it?:nono: :nono:

It's not just the way they portray the nurses, it's how they protray sickness and medicine in general. Actually the main nurse character is probably the most wise in the series. Why she chooses to hang around with a bunch of medical bufoons, I don't know.

There's dark humor and then there's the kind of humor we use here at allnurses.com. These are acceptible, because deep down you know the person is only using this as a device to blow of steam and laugh at the world. Most of the humor in "scrubs"is just so low-brow that you just know somewhere somebody is not getting that it's a joke and mistakes it for the truth. These are the kind of people I don't care to be on the opposite side of the bedside from.

Does any of your friends or neighbors or whoever asked you why you had to study since what you do is to giving pills..............

ARGGG!!!

:(

Sleepyeyes, great response. I just forwarded your post to all my nurse friends. Thank you so very much. I think you said it very well.

From the mouth of the one, the only, the great Laura Gasparis Vonfrolio: A doctor said to her "you're not going to teach these nurses to be little doctors are you?" Her answer: "I expect so much more from them than that"!!!!! SLeepyeyes, what you said was simply brillant! So true. And Biscuit, do you mind if I borrow that line?? I work in a teaching hospital and as you know JULY is right around the corner!!

Specializes in Trauma, Teaching.
Originally posted by Figaro's Mom

Originally posted by JBudd

Sometimes I get called Doctor (gee, am I too authoritative?)

Nah, just means you're confident in how you do your job and in what you know, and it shows :)

Hey, where in New Mexico are you?

Just down the hill and south past the opera:roll :saint:

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