Image Overhaul: Media still are off-target portraying nurses

Image overhaul
Media still are off-target portraying nurses

By Diane Sussman
October 23, 2000
Photo Courtesy of Warner Bros. Television

Nurses on the NBC TV show “ER.” Despite recent improvements, many fictional portraits of nurses continue to ignore, trivialize or miss the mark.


	You've read the article. Now tell us what you think. Related sites Sigma Theta Tau International Woodhull Study on Nursing and the Media Nurses watching nurses The big screen. So what if it’s a ploy to increase ticket sales – nurses would probably want to see "Nurse Betty" anyway. USA Films has agreed to donate $1 to the Nurse Betty Scholarship Fund for each of the first 10,000 nurses or nursing students who see the movie by Oct. 31. Participants need to send their name, address and ticket stubs to the Nurse Betty Scholarship Fund, Foundation of the National Student Nurses Association, 555 West 57th Street, Suite 1327, New York, N.Y. 10019. The small screen. On Oct. 29 at 9 p.m., CBS airs "The Last Dance," a movie about a nurse (Eric Stoltz) who cares for an elderly woman (Maureen O’Hara, of Jane fame). The video store. Word-of-mouth has it that Philip Seymour Hoffman gives an affecting performance as Phil Parma, a nurse taking care of a dying patient (Jason Robards) in "Magnolia." Tom Cruise stars, but not, alas, as a nurse. ~ Diane Sussman

When Louise Fletcher trained her icy stare on Jack Nicholson in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest" and told him that if he didn’t take his pill orally she would find another way to dispense it, she cemented her Oscar – and the image of a malevolent nurse. Like Scrooge or Miss Havisham, calling someone Nurse Ratched needs no explanation.

Decades have passed since then, but fictional portraits of nurses continue to ignore, trivialize or miss the mark on what nurses do, while real nurses like Darva Conger seem to make headlines only when they pose for Playboy. Nurses looking for evidence need only check out the cover of the latest Blink 182 CD, which features a buxom RN with a red Wonderbra and matching lips.

Men in the profession aren’t exempt, either. In the movie "Meet the Parents," Ben Stiller’s announcement that he’s a nurse prompts hoots of derision from his fiancee’s family.

"I really get tired of seeing nurses portrayed in a bimbo-ish way, just as eye candy, with everyone walking around in lingerie, as if nurses do that," said Susie Schelling, RN, a medical/technical consultant for TV and movies and a staff nurse at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, Calif. "I object to that."

A dearth of images
Unfortunately, when cheese – be it cheesy or cheesecake – isn’t on the media menu, not much else is. The 1997 Woodhull Study on Nursing and the Media, conducted by Sigma Theta Tau International, found that nurses were severely under-represented in print media, including in comprehensive coverage of health care. Of 1,153 health care stories in 16 major newspapers, only 11 carried references to nurses, the study found.

Television didn’t do much better with its first episode of "Hopkins 24/7," either. Purported to be a reality-based show about "people at the core of medical care," the episode had more footage of physicians, patients and organs than nurses.

None of this surprises Daniel Pesut, Ph.D., RN, FAAN, department chair of the Indiana University School of Nursing in Indianapolis. "What the Woodhull study showed is that nursing is in the shadows," he said. "What’s background, what’s in the shadows, are nurses and caring, and the role of nurses. What’s in the foreground is a lot of other stuff. What needs to happen is the background, shadow stuff needs to come to the foreground."

Hard headlines
One of the latest blows to the image of nurses came not from the studios of Hollywood but from the newsroom of the Chicago Tribune.

From Sept. 10-12, the paper ran stories examining problems in public health care. The stories picked up on a national study showing that in the past five years, 1,720 hospital patients have been accidentally killed and 9,584 others injured from the actions – or lack of action – by registered nurses.

"Nursing Mistakes Kill, Injure Thousands," the headline read, then went on with this lead: "Lax government oversight and a shoddy system of reporting medical errors allow negligent, incompetent and impaired registered nurses to return to work in Illinois even after committing deadly errors. In Chicago, registered nurses have injected themselves with heroin and cocaine, then committed dozens of errors. They have stolen prescribed medications, then left patients to suffer in pain for hours."

Nursing organizations around the country were "floored" by the stories, said Kathy Bennison, manager of marketing and public relations for Sigma Theta Tau. Nancy Dickenson-Hazard, MSN, RN, FAAN, chief executive officer for the honor society, responded with a letter that commended the paper for "its investigation of the threat to public safety posed by the breakdowns in our national health care system" but chided it for seeming "to place the blame squarely on nurses."

"This is unfortunate and untrue," Dickenson-Hazard said.

"It’s sort of a dark cloud," Pesut said. "The nurses I’ve talked to were saying things like, ‘Where did they get their information?’ and ‘They really don’t understand the whole picture.’ I do think it injures people’s perceptions. I mean, how could it not?"

Reality-based nursing
Despite all this, experts say the image of nurses is improving, although there have been no formal follow-up studies and no routine regular monitoring of press reports to confirm this.

The recent movie "Nurse Betty," although not exactly about nurses, didn’t offend. Schelling attests to a strong desire on the part of TV and movie producers to at least get the medical and technical part right. "The people I come across think RNs have something to say and think they are important," Schelling said.

Some portrayals do hit the mark, though, most notably the PBS series "On Our Own Terms: Bill Moyers on Dying," which showed hospice and home care nurses whose most basic actions – feeding, bathing, getting patients out of bed – testified to their dedication and concern. "I keep hearing about the nurse from Balm of Gilead [a terminal ward at Cooper Green Hospital in Birmingham, Ala.], how wonderful she was," Pesut said.

That is exactly the kind of portrayal of nurses that Schelling would like to see most. "If I could design the ideal show, I’d like to see something that actually shows what nurses do each day, including the emotional moments with patients. It would be more about the soul of this particular RN than some big drama."