We’ve discussed the representation of nurses on television programs before. Generally, with very few exceptions, we are portrayed as invisible, obedient, unthinking servants. But has anyone noticed on House lately, a show widely criticized for not having any nurses working in its hospital at all, has one nurse character that has bopped her way into increased screen time?
I’ve been watching her for several weeks now and I still haven’t caught her name. She appears all over the hospital, but can most often be seen outside the office of the Dean of Medicine playing secretary… or usherette, I’m still not sure which. She pops in to tell the Dean that So-and-So is here to see her now, or that another So-and-So is waiting somewhere for their meeting. She turns up wherever the Dean of Medicine is, injecting information and advice about whatever the Dean of Medicine is up to. She reminds the Dean of meetings, of previous commitments, of whatever. The Dean of Medicine generically asked her to “check the per diem schedule for conflicts” and the nurse generically got right on it. She never talks about nursing. She never talks about medicine. She wears plain blue scrubs and has a stethoscope around her neck and a chart in her hand. Did I tell you I haven’t caught her name yet? She sure gets a lot of screen time following the Dean of Medicine around though, wow! Anyone who didn’t know any better would think she worked for the Dean of Medicine. Unfortunately, most people don’t know any better.
I don’t watch House, but these things bother me a lot with other shows. Much as I like Grey’s, the absence of nurses, combined with physicians doing tasks that nurses normally would, bugs me. I didn’t start watching the show regularly until like, the 5th season, but every once in a while (like last night) I’ll catch an early rerun. The episode that was on last night, some guy (not sure who he was, he’s not on any more) was lying in bed talking to Izzy, when he suddenly went in to some kind of distress. Monitors going off like crazy, Izzy puts a non rebreather on him and sticks her head out in to the hall and says “page Dr. So and So” (it didn’t show who she said it to, if anyone, or if it was just a general declaration). First thing that came to MY mind was, with all of those monitors alarming, that room would have at LEAST a couple of nurses hurrying in to it, in the real world. No one responded to them? Really? It’s little things like that.
Just the sheer number of scenes where there are tons of doctors tending to a patient, and never a nurse, ticks me off. Granted, I don’t know how teaching hospitals work (since I don’t work in one), but I DO know they have nurses….
ALL tv shows portray “real life” very poorly, from police shows to lawyer shows to the soap operas. Unfortunately the general public (unless they work in those jobs) get skewered ideas of those professions. I’ve had many patients say to me, “you nurses do most of the work in hospitals, not the doctors.” I think people “get it” once they deal with the real world. It is annoying but I guess that is why it is called the “idiot box.”