I don't look for accuracy when it comes to professions on TV shows, even if that profession is a real-life profession too. So if I were to watch Nurse Jackie and see her popping Vicodin, I wouldn't say to myself, "hey, that's what all nurses might do!" I also don't think that all Madison Avenue advertising guys cheat on their wives (Mad Men) and I don't think that all politicians can fly (Heroes). I do, however, think that all of the hot women you see on those late-night chat line ads really do represent the type of women you'll talk to when you call.But nurses are upset over Showtime's new Edie Falco show Nurse Jackie.
Especially the New York State Nurses Association. A spokesperson for the organization says "we believe that the public's view of nurses is influenced by TV dramas, and we have yet to see an accurate portrayal of what nurses really do." Even ER?
So, do they have a legit beef? I don't think the show is saying "this is the world of nurses," they're saying that this is the world of this particular nurse on this particular drama. To quote William Shatner on SNL, "it's just a TV show!"
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
6-09-2009 @ 7:49PM
jds65 said...
To be fair you didn't exactly use two very good examples. Heroes is a sci-fi program. Mad Men is set in the 60s. How about choosing something more "realistic"? Like The West Wing? Or The Practice? Or Boston Public?
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6-10-2009 @ 10:18AM
eric f. said...
Uh, the 60's were "real".
6-09-2009 @ 9:13PM
Harpy said...
Why do people believe that a character in fiction, ( set up, to create a theatrical device to drive the fiction) somehow reflects on anyone other than that character?
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6-09-2009 @ 7:57PM
Man said...
Not just nurses but long time TV watchers think this show is awful.
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6-09-2009 @ 8:08PM
gilbert said...
Nurse Jackie was pretty interesting show.People need to try to stop being so uptight.And if the Nurses Association doesn't like it, they probably need to pop some Vicodin also.
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6-09-2009 @ 9:59PM
jffm said...
There are a lot of stupid/gullible/naive/simple minded people out there. If nurses feel like there's a really bad portrayal of their profession out there, I can see why they would speak up. They're not saying every single person that sees a bad portrayal is going to be influenced by it, but it doesn't take a lot of meatheads to make your life miserable with wrongheaded ideas.
I suspect they also are well aware the shows not going anywhere if it's successful, but they also know that if they make enough noise the writers may very well balance out the portrayal a little bit more. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
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6-09-2009 @ 11:06PM
wes said...
Falco is what a good nurse should be. The lazy nursessteal pill, eat at there deak, and get annoyed if you ask a question. Falco can show them what is right and what is wrong about their behavior.
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6-09-2009 @ 11:40PM
mj said...
I'm a nurse. I have never stolen, taken drugs, eaten at my desk, or had sex with doctors. I have always tried to be good at my job. I am so sick of nurses shown this way on television and films. This is why I refuse to watch any medical shows, except House, because they seldom even SHOW a nurse.
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6-10-2009 @ 12:02AM
Karen said...
...because it is ok to show doctors as rude, vicodin popping, manipulative, etc....just not nurses.
6-10-2009 @ 2:21AM
BartmanDK said...
Cry me a river! So i should start crying too that all IT workers are portrayed as lazy slobs? Or that not all of us are really secret agents?
6-10-2009 @ 12:05AM
mj said...
Sigh. I suppose I should just smile every time a nurse is shown doing bad things? Sorry, you get tired of it after awhile, especially when people DO comment on it, with a snide smile. I once had a man say, "Oh, all nurses are whores." Should I have laughed it off? I didn't.
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6-10-2009 @ 12:57AM
bc said...
I would have asked him just how he came by that knowledge.
The question remains, why is a show that portrays doctors in a negative way good, and one that allegedly portrays a nurse in a negative way (I don't get Showtime and thus can't form an opinion) bad? Another question would be, have you sought counseling to deal with your delusion that scripted drama is intended to represent real life?
6-10-2009 @ 9:08AM
Janniel said...
Get over yourself. It's hard to believe you are intelligent enough to be a nurse. Are you a woman or a man?....do you object to the way people are portrayed on fictional tv shows?
There is no controversy here, just people looking to fuss and argue.
6-23-2009 @ 11:32PM
marla said...
basically it's a show about a woman whose a skank and a criminal.
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6-10-2009 @ 10:20AM
eric f. said...
And that's a bad thing? It's very entertaining, which = good tv.
6-10-2009 @ 4:13AM
Richard D. Clark said...
It's pretty simple: there would be no controversy if the word "Nurse" didn't appear in the title.
Yes, it's a drama about a character, not a documentary about a profession. But "nurse" is not a fictional job. So it's understandable that nurses might feel they're being poorly portrayed.
But, that said, everybody needs to lighten up. It's true that nurses don't get enough respect. It's also true that pretty much everybody doesn't get enough respect. Modern media is about exploitation, not respect. No news here.
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6-10-2009 @ 11:24AM
Carly said...
It seems at least one patient/mother of a patient thinks that Nurse Jackie was in some ways a positive reflection of nurses. See her post at http://iamsoannoyed.com/?p=1643
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6-11-2009 @ 5:29PM
Cathy Parochniack said...
To MJ and all other fellow nurses, Nurse Jackie is fiction, although I don't doubt there are impaired nurses around, but it does not cast a foul light on what I do for my patients and my relationship with them, it is a wise person in any profession that can take their job seriousle but themselves lightly, Nurse Jackie is, in my opinion really funny, and at the end of the day is just that and no more.
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6-14-2009 @ 2:28PM
Jude said...
The men I've known who become RN's (and usually snag better jobs than their female peers even when they're job hoppers) are the ones most likely to be pill-poppers, drug thieves and generally bad for the profession --- but my sample is limited to two males who are R.N.'s.
Don't know what women in the nursing profession have experienced about the relative ethics of males and females in nursing, but generally media seem to be doing a hatchet job on women at all levels. I've started a blog about it, with images, and the Nurse Jackie series seems part of the same cultural disinformation. For example, Nurse Jackie communicates how she knew better than a doctor about a patient who would die (something true in my experience about the higher calling of nurses over doctors), then the doctor gropes her breast. TV and movies make their primary impact on people's minds by the pictures. In a similar vein, I've blogged about media and sexting today, http://thelongestwar.wordpress.com/, plus many prior posts on the anti-woman focus of modern mass media (with images to prove the point).
Nurse Jackie, in context as the media image manufactured for the mass mind, takes away more than contributing to any goal of seeing women, and women as nurses, in the strong professional light that is deserved by reality instead of media fiction.
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7-09-2009 @ 3:50PM
cubiche said...
The ironic thing is that Nurse Jackie is EXACTLY the kind of nurse I would want to have as a patient. In real life my experience with nurses has been that they in general seem to hate patients, are put-out if you dare ask them for anything, and in general seem to hate their jobs. Nurse Jackie, however, may have an attitude but genuinely appears to care for the people in her care. Give me the Vicodin-addicted nurse over the bitchy one anyday!
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