Perception Of Nurses During Television Versus Real Life

The nurse in Grey’s Anatomy is never treated with any respect from the doctors and surgeons. Throughout the clips she is never doing her actual job as a nurse and only relaying messages to the doctors that are seemingly unimportant in a hospital setting. This portrays the nurse as being insignificant in the

If you watch anything on ABC, you might know of a show called “Greys Anatomy”. A medical drama show that contains mind-blowing procedures and heart wrenching life scenarios. In the show, surgeries and surgeons are obviously the focus because... well, it is more fascinating to watch. Even though the show captures the excitement and difficulty of being a surgeon, there is a certain group of people who have a job twice as strenuous and are hardly shown. That group is the nurses. Although the hard working caregivers are not shown, the producer, Shonda Rhymes, dedicated a whole episode to the hard working nurses around the nation.

In one episode of “Grey’s Anatomy,” a male doctor insults a female doctor, by calling her a nurse (Rhimes). The female doctor feels offended being called a nurse and replied “Did you just called me a nurse?” As a student nurse, I believe that nursing is a respectable profession. We are not medical school rejects, dropouts or failures. We chose nursing, because we wanted to be a nurse as bad as the Medical Schools’ students want to become MDs. Unfortunately, this kind of stereotype has created a big misunderstanding of nursing in the eyes of our

Media has an immense effect on societal views, and cultural norms. It is not surprising then, that media influences the public view of the nursing profession (McHugh, 2012). Negative portrayal of nursing in media is detrimental, these stereotypes undermine the profession which leads to less resources and a negative image of nursing among nursing students (Anonymous, 2010). For these reasons the image of nursing in media is something that needs to be explored, to understand how the nursing image in media affects both public and personal perception of the profession (Anonymous, 2010). Nurse Jackie is a controversial television show about an Emergency room nurse named Jackie (Hudis & Zisk, 2009). In this series Jackie is middle aged, married, mother of two, and while she is depicted as being loving with her family, she is having an affair with the pharmacist for her department. As a nurse Jackie is caring, and compassionate towards her patients, while also exhibiting unethical and inappropriate behaviours both within and outside of her working environment (Sorrell, 2009). Jackie is a complex character who exhibits both positive and negative nursing behaviours.

Prior to my nursing education, my perception of a registered nurse was that of a health care professional whose tasks include administering medications to sick patients on a timely fashion and making sure that the doctor’s orders are met. Without proper education on the different duties and responsibilities that encompass the role of a registered nurse, my impressions of the nursing profesison relied heavily on the various misconceptions that is often portrayed on television and other forms of media. Even after graduating from nursing school, I still have a difficult time in finding a clear definition to my role in nursing as it tend to incorporate various roles such as an educator, advocate, researcher and many others. I do not think of the nursing profession as a single entity, but rather a melting pot of assorted roles that simply overlap for the sole purpose of

When people think about nurses, many ideas come to mind. They think of the hideous old starched, white uniforms, a doctor’s handmaiden, the sexy or naughty nurse, or a torturer. The media and society have manipulated the identity and role of nurses. None of these ideas truly portray nurses and what they do. Nurses are with the patients more than the doctors. People do not realize how little they will encounter the doctor in the hospital until they are actually in the hospital. People quickly realize how important nurses are. Because nurses interact with their patients constantly, nurses are the ones who know the patients best.

I think nursing not only includes taking care of patients and helping out the doctors. I believe that there is some art to nursing as well, other than all the education and science involved of course. I believe that that caring is the essence of nursing, and that it should be viewed by the nurses as their moral ideal of preserving human dignity. This is to be done by helping the patients in finding some deeper meaning to their illnesses and suffering so that they are able to understand themselves better and are able to restore and promote their personal harmony and balance between the mind, body, and soul. Thus, I

The put down gossip and rumors nurse – the nurse that speaks ill about others

The media is known to have immense influences on the public perception from body images to what kind of car people should buy. And the nursing image is not immune to these influences. What Hollywood transmits to the public about nurse’s works much like an advertising industry. Television has represented nurses in varying degrees and not all of them are flattering. We have been portrayed as

Whenever people are sick or have an emergency and have to go to the hospital, nurses are always there to comfort them. Nursing is a fast growing occupation here in the United States and makes up the vast majority of the healthcare industry. Nursing is a career that allows people to care for others. Aside from the greatness of helping others, it also comes with stressful situations that require plenty of responsibility because the medical field is always evolving. There is a high demand for nurses. Nurses play a huge role in the medical field, particularly nurse practitioners. Although doctors tend to get the most recognition for patient care, the reality is

Throughout time the world’s image on Nursing has evolved rapidly. Nurses work in an extremely stressful environment and must carry out their duties in a professional manner to ensure proper procedures are followed throughout their routines. They also have a considerable amount of responsibility that comes with their career. For those reasons nurses must present themselves in a professional and structured manner at all times. The Image of Nursing describes how people in and out of the profession see nurses. Nurses must protect and continuously improve their image by fully applying themselves to their profession every day. Nurses complete rigorous course studies to obtain the ability to manage themselves and lead others towards a common

How did average citizens view nurses in the past? How do average citizens view nurses now? The typical nurse in the past was viewed as a woman wearing a white hat, white shirt, and bottoms and a person who only cared and comforted someone, and did not have much work to do. People viewed nurses as, having poor working conditions, shift work and a limited level of autonomy. Nurses work was seen as caring for and helping patients, being considered inferior than doctors. What these people don’t realize is the number of educational

The nursing profession is one of many portrayed by the media. In its simplest form media is how information is shared and stored. Media covers a wide range of services, advertisements, brochures, pamphlets, TV shows, films, novels, and magazines, digital, electronic, it goes on and on. Media is more accessible these days; the internet and wireless technology makes it easy for many people to access information on a wide scale. As information is shared by the media the public creates an image. This image may be right or it can be wrong, it all depends on the media’s accuracy. Nurses have been depicted in many forms over the years. These depictions can influence the public’s opinion of the profession as well as the likelihood that the profession will be considered for future students. Nurses need to take a more active role in how the profession is portrayed by the media, they need to work together to portray the profession in its best light in order to recruit and retain nurses.

Like any scientific discipline, the nursing profession has evolved over time. Nurses, once regarded as housemaids and lower class citizens, now hold positions of authority and stature in our modern society. These changes in the profession are attributed to the many nurse theorists who devoted their lives to the improvement of patient care. Through their theoretical advancements, the public perception of nursing has gone from dismissive to reverential. Today, our culture considers the nursing profession to be one of the most rewarding and respected career paths an individual can pursue. Through a review of one such patient theorist, Dorothea Orem, one can witness this change in the perception of the nursing profession. As a first semester student in a professional nursing course of study, Orem has already influenced my personal nursing philosophy.

Nursing is universal in the sense that nurses can be found almost in all countries around the world (Henderson, 1978). They are in the hospitals, in school clinics, in the community centres, residential homes and even play major roles in some of the popular soap operas in television. There are even television shows that mainly revolve around nurses and which chronicles what they do at work - both the positive and the negative. It is one of the most visible and easily identifiable occupations as compared for example to other occupations such as engineers, managers or even pharmacists, medical technologists and other health related occupations. This is partly because of what nurses do and most especially how nurses look - with some still