Fall 2023 TV Overview!
Despite the Hollywood strikes, good portrayals of nursing are coming on the BBC’s Call the Midwife and on Netflix’s Virgin River. But when more shows appear, the prime-time landscape will likely become physician-centric once again, with hospital dramas like Grey’s Anatomy (ABC) and the new Doc (Fox).
October 2023 – This fall’s U.S. television schedule is unusually light for nurse-related programming, due to the strikes by Hollywood writers (ended) and actors (ongoing). But a few noteworthy shows are on the way, or already here. Call the Midwife (BBC/PBS/Netflix; premiering early 2024) will be back for a 13th season about the exploits of skilled and autonomous nurse-midwives in late 1960s London. It remains the best show for nursing on U.S. television. Netflix’s Virgin River, whose lead character is an able nurse practitioner (NP) in a small California town, has already released most of its fifth season. And NBC will air the third season of the Canadian drama Transplant (premiering Oct. 12), about a skilled trauma physician from Syria who has started over in Toronto. It has a minor nurse character with some authority, but overall the nurses are assistive and the focus is on heroic physicians. As far as shows that are likely to appear later, we are aware of one new one, Fox’s Doc, a drama about a “brilliant” physician who has lost her recent memory after a brain injury. The showrunner worked on ABC’s physician-dominated Private Practice, and the likelihood of a good portrayal of nursing here is low. Veteran shows that are likely to return include Chicago Med (NBC), which focuses on physicians but has two major nurse characters with real skill and authority. On the CBS sitcom Bob Hearts Abishola, one lead character is a competent Nigerian-born nurse, but she is eager to abandon nursing for medicine, reinforcing the wannabe-physician stereotype; last season’s finale, in which Abishola awaited admission to an elite medical school, included attacks on nursing as a menial job for failures. Finally, Grey’s Anatomy (ABC) and The Good Doctor (ABC) will offer visions of hospital care in which physicians do pretty much everything that matters. Admittedly, in a surprising development, two minor nurse characters on The Good Doctor have recently displayed skill and advocacy. Please join us in encouraging Hollywood to offer more accurate portrayals of nursing!
The Shows
New Show
Doc (Fox; TBD)
According to media reports in April 2023, Fox will be offering a new hospital show based on the globally popular Italian drama Doc – Nelle tue mani, the premise of which has apparently been sold for the creation of similar shows in many other nations. According to a Deadline piece from April 2023:
FOX’s Doc is a new medical drama centered on the hard-charging, brilliant Dr. Amy Elias, Chief of Internal and Family Medicine at Westside Hospital in Minneapolis. After a brain injury erases the last eight years of her life, Amy must navigate an unfamiliar world where she has no recollection of patients she’s treated, colleagues she’s crossed, the soulmate she divorced, the man she now loves and the tragedy that caused her to push everyone away. She can rely only on her estranged 17-year-old daughter, whom she remembers as a 9-year-old, and a handful of devoted friends as she struggles to continue practicing medicine, despite having lost nearly a decade of knowledge and experience.
It’s not impossible that such a drama would include a fair portrayal of nursing, just unlikely. We can’t recall seeing a show pitched as focusing on a “brilliant” physician that included strong regular nurse characters. And since showrunner Barbie Kligman spent time on the Grey’s Anatomy spinoff Private Practice – a show that treated nursing abysmally – there is no cause for optimism here. Our guess is that all or almost all major clinical characters will be physicians. See more at TV Fanatic.
Returning shows
Call the Midwife (BBC/PBS; early 2024)
The best current prime time show for nursing will return for a 13th season in early 2024, after the usual Christmas special. The series will continue to portray about 10 nurse-midwife characters providing holistic care to a working-class community in late 1960s London. The show presents nurses as autonomous professionals who help pregnant women and others overcome a host of health, social, and economic challenges during an era of great transition. Recent episodes have included the junior midwife Nancy Corrigan, giving the show the chance to highlight the expertise of the veteran midwives in a teaching context, as Hollywood hospital shows have traditionally done with physicians. The show has occasionally over-credited physicians, but the main impression it leaves is of nursing authority and life-saving skill. See our webpage featuring analyses of previous seasons, or the show’s website, where you can find episodes.
Virgin River (Netflix; Sept. 7 and Nov. 30, 2023)
This drama follows rural California nurse practitioner Mel Monroe, and it has now returned for a fifth season, having already aired four seasons in less than three years. The show is mostly about romance and personal intrigue, and so there have never been too many substantial clinical plotlines. Still, Mel has regularly shown advanced skills, managing issues including emergency care, prenatal care, and her physician colleague Doc’s initially regressive views of nursing. The fourth season probably had less clinical care than the prior ones. In episode 2 of that season, Mel’s usually great psychosocial care faltered somewhat with a couple experiencing a stillbirth, owing to a past experience of her own. But otherwise she remained authoritative and sensitive in helping distressed patients and families, as in her counseling of a newly-diagnosed lupus patient in episode 5 and the partner of a rape survivor in episode 12. In early episodes in the fifth season, Mel left Doc’s clinic to focus on her upcoming wedding and high-risk pregnancy, and at first the clinic mostly seemed to miss her administrative work, rather than her nursing. But the plotting has allowed for her to continue providing expert care, with a focus on her adept psychosocial support for the community as it faces various challenges. For more information see our review of season 1 and the show’s website.
Chicago Med (NBC; TBD)
This Dick Wolf drama, returning for a ninth season, is mainly about a half dozen emergency physicians, and they direct most of the care we see. But for its first six seasons the show also had three major nurse characters, which, for Hollywood, is a glut. They were the competent ED nurse April Sexton, the authoritative ED charge nurse Maggie Lockwood, and the strong hospital executive Sharon Goodwin, who is a nurse. These nurses at times played key roles in care. Unfortunately, April left at the end of the sixth season to become a nurse practitioner, and she was not replaced. April did return for limited appearances in season 8. These were focused on her romantic relationship with one of the physicians, who she married in the middle of the season before they both exited, but she did at least have a chance to display her new diagnostic abilities on a few occasions. The show also has recurring minor nurse characters, although they tend to operate mainly as assistants, absorbing physician commands. Still, Goodwin and Lockwood remain critical, authoritative parts of the care the show portrays. In the eighth season, Goodwin helped guide the staff through challenges related to a problematic tech mogul who became a controlling owner of the hospital. She was also the lead for management in a labor dispute with custodial workers. Meanwhile, Lockwood continued to play the ED charge nurse role while attempting to cope with fallout related to her daughter’s physician residency—in the same ED. For more information see our page on Chicago Med or the NBC website.
Bob Hearts Abishola (CBS; TBD)
One of the two main characters in this popular sitcom, returning for a fifth season, is Abishola, a skilled, no-nonsense hospital nurse who is originally from Nigeria and has now married Detroit sock company boss Bob. Abishola has displayed clinical knowledge and a holistic approach, and at times she has advocated for her patients. The show doesn’t spend much time on clinical plotlines, and it lost points in early seasons for showing Abishola push her son to be a physician, rather than a nurse. But it was still generally helpful until the second season, when Abishola announced that she herself would become a physician, seemingly because of an obsession with status that the show suggests is a hallmark of Nigerians. Since then the show has reinforced the damaging wannabe-physician stereotype. The fourth season did include a surprisingly strong plotline in episode 9 about a nurses’ strike, caused at least in part by understaffing. The strike was led by the veteran charge nurse Gloria. But the fourth season finale was a perfect summary of Hollywood’s traditional view of how nursing and medicine compare. Abishola spent the episode agonizing about whether she would be admitted to Johns Hopkins medical school. That entailed a series of interactions in which she and the Nigerians in her circle did not just extol that school and medicine generally, but repeatedly attacked nursing as a low-skilled job for failures. We were meant to laugh at their over-the-top elitism, but no one spoke on behalf of nursing; the best Bob could do was note that Abishola still had “a job working with your best friends.” She was finally admitted, but it’s not clear if she will actually go, as Bob does not want to go to Baltimore. Even if she does remain in nursing, any future embrace of the profession as worthwhile seems unlikely, and in any event would not be credible. For more information, see our review of season 1 and the Bob Hearts Abishola page on the CBS website.
Transplant (CTV/NBC; Oct. 12)
This Canadian drama about a refugee from Syria who is also a gifted trauma physician has returned for a third season on NBC, where it began airing in 2020 as part of the network’s effort to find new programming during the Covid pandemic. Despite the main character’s experience, he must start over as a resident in a Toronto ED. There is one semi-major nurse character, head nurse Claire Malone. She has displayed some clinical skills and authority, particularly in dealing with the former head ED physician, with whom she had a longstanding professional and personal relationship. But overall, the show’s nurses are no more than competent assistants who appear occasionally, obeying physician commands, reporting vital signs, and handling logistics. The overwhelming focus is on the physicians, who have the real skills and who handle the vast majority of patient care. And there is no reason to expect anything different from the third season, which finished airing in Canada in early 2023. See more about the show on the NBC website.
The Good Doctor (ABC; TBD)
This drama about a brilliant young surgeon with autism is back for a seventh season. As with Grey’s Anatomy, the many physician characters on this show do everything that really matters, and nurse characters have generally been silent order-takers or helpless ninnies, on the rare occasions when they have appeared at all. However, starting in the middle of the fifth season, there have been occasional plotlines in which two recurring nurse characters show some real clinical knowledge and skill. They are Jerome Martel, who is the physician Asher Wolke’s boyfriend, and Dalisay Villanueva, who at first mainly received attention as the target of domestic violence. In the episode 7 of the sixth season, Martel basically resuscitated a crashing infant by holding and singing to it, stunning his tech-focused physician boyfriend. Villanueva, when she appeared, seemed to have evolved into a strong advocate for patients and nursing. In episode 18, she temporarily shut down her relationship with Marcus Andrews, the surgeon who was also president of the hospital, with a short speech explaining that she could not go out with someone who did not value nursing enough to invest in it by hiring enough staff nurses. And in the season finale, her nursing unionization efforts apparently created enough of a conflict of interest that Andrews decided to resign, to enable him to continue seeing her. (The actor playing Andrews soon announced that he would run for the U.S. Senate.) In fairness, Villanueva’s plotlines have also tended to reinforce the idea that nurses report to physicians and have little to no autonomy; the hospital heirarchy is often an issue, but nurse managers don’t seem to exist. And in many episodes, neither Martel nor Villanueva appear. For more information see our page on The Good Doctor or the show’s website on ABC.
Grey’s Anatomy (ABC; TBD)
Back for a 20th season, this prime time TV institution will again show more than a dozen surgeons providing all of the hospital care that matters, including even managing violent patients, while nurses are generally clueless handmaidens, on the rare occasions when they appear at all. Actually, as we noted last year, the veteran OR nurse BokHee does appear briefly in many episodes, but she really never speaks. In season 19, a few minor nurse characters did surface, but they were always assistants with few skills or real responsibilities. Much of their job seemed to consist of passing messages from one physician to another. In a number of episodes, they appeared mainly to present some kind of logistical obstacle for, or a pointed refusal to help, struggling resident physicians. And at times, they were casual romantic objects for the physicians. In one striking scene in episode 11, the chief trauma physician Owen Hunt reasserted control after an absence with an aggressive little speech to the ED staff about everyone going back to his treatment protocols, rather than those of his temporary replacement. When Hunt asked if there were questions, all the nurses cared about was whether Hunt would continue his replacement’s practice of buying them lunch on Fridays. (He would not.) Of course, this portrays nurses as unskilled servants who care only about trivial perks. For more information see our Grey’s Anatomy page with analyses over the years or the show’s website on ABC.
Conclusion
The physician-centric narrative of most U.S. hospital shows is exemplified by dramas like Grey’s Anatomy, on which nurses tend to be handmaidens, at best. In fairness, some shows, like Chicago Med, have at least offered substantial examples of nursing skill, advocacy, and even autonomy. But only Call the Midwife and Virgin River can be expected to offer a consistently good portrayal of nursing. Please join us in encouraging better portrayals of nursing!
Take Action!
With all these shows, we need your help! Consult our Take Action page for ideas. Also, since we cannot monitor the world’s media by ourselves, please watch one or more of the shows with a nursing element and let us know if you see a good or bad portrayal at info@truthaboutnursing.org. If we all work on a piece of the puzzle, we can build a society that understands the true worth of nursing, helping to strengthen the profession so nurses can deliver better patient care.
