The Truth About Nursing

Memorial Heights Emergency Center in Houston posted a billboard portraying nurses as eye candy in its quest to lure patients to its outpatient facility--one owned by physician Akash Bhagat, who thinks so little of nurses as professionals that he boasted on a radio program that his facility refused to hire nurse practitioners because they are trained "at a different level." 

  In the episode of Disney's Lab Rats broadcast on August 5, 2013 (“Bionic Showdown”), inventor Donald Davenport mocks his brother Doug by noting that Doug has turned into “Dr. Evil,” “or should I say Nurse Practitioner Evil, since you flunked out of med school!” That is a baseless and damaging message about nurse practitioners because research shows that even jokes affect what people think and that advanced practice nurses provide care that is at least as good as physician care.

People have the right to show the public the kind of conduct we see on Scrubbing In. But when that conduct is so closely associated with nursing, it can be troubling, because of the profession's poor image. Nursing has endured decades of negative media images, including the enduring ideas that nurses are unskilled and sexually available. These stereotypes form the foundation of the disrespect and underfunding that has led to the global nursing shortage, which kills millions of people every year. And because of nursing's poor image, it matters which nurses are chosen to appear on a show like Scrubbing In and what they are seen to be doing on the show. We cannot assume that the public, particularly the impressionable young MTV demographic, will know that there are millions of highly qualified professional nurses out there regardless of what appears on this show. So the show is a public health problem.