The Mindy Project's one recurring nurse character, Morgan Tookers, is a goofy ex-convict, well-intentioned but ignorant, very odd, and a little scary, who has shown virtually no health expertise. Yet in real life, nurses are autonomous professionals with years of college science education who save lives and improve outcomes every day.

The December 4, 2012 episode included a grossly inaccurate attack on midwives, as New Agey men “stealing” patients from Mindy's OB-GYN practice. Mindy gets the patients back by telling them that midwives have no significant health training or skill and that only physicians can provide real health care to pregnant women. The show’s physician characters also caricature the midwives as seductive “charlatans” and “quacks” who are hostile to all “Western medicine,” including drugs and vaccines. Yet research shows that nurse midwives provide care that is as good as or better than that provided by physicians.