In August 2022, The Spinoff reported that the New Zealand government planned to team up with the soap opera Shortland Street to address the nation’s nursing shortage. This move was easy to mock, but in fact even the silliest fictional media has the potential to affect how the public sees nursing—for better or worse.
More good portrayals of nursing are coming on the BBC’s Call the Midwife and Netflix’s Virgin River. But Bob Hearts Abishola (CBS) returns with a nurse who remains determined to become a physician because she believes it has a higher status. And the prime-time landscape is still dominated by physician-centric programming, including Grey’s Anatomy, The Good Doctor, and New Amsterdam.
Each episode of Doc McStuffins sends a basic health message, usually in a narrow, physician-centric “diagnosis and treatment” framework. But wait! One of the dolls, Hallie the Hippo, is “Doc’s nurse.” At different points the Hallie character reflects most of the major nursing stereotypes, from low-skilled handmaiden to motherly angel to crusty battle-axe. Her main job often seems to be fetching the Big Book of Boo-Boos for Doc. . The show’s creator has noted that she originally saw the Hallie character as a “fumbling, bumbling mess,”
New Amsterdam pushes reform—but through the same old physician-centric narrative.
On the NBC drama’s first season (2018-19), maverick medical director Max Goodwin and a half dozen physician colleagues shake up conventional care at an overburdened public hospital. But aside from a few plotlines involving the minor nurse character Casey Acosta, it’s more of the same damaging Hollywood model, with nurses as silent servants to the brilliant physicians who call all the shots and save all the lives.
As Jane the Virgin ends, Xo finds her way—to nursing school!
On the final season of The CW’s popular telenovela Jane the Virgin, ending in 2019, the main character’s mother Xiomara finally decided on a career path that held promise: nursing. In general, the plotline tracing Xo’s decision-making and nursing school application process told viewers that nursing is a challenging science profession.
More good portrayals of nursing are coming on the BBC’s Call the Midwife and Netflix’s Virgin River. On the new Ordinary Joe (NBC), a nurse is one of the lead character’s three alternative personas. But Bob Hearts Abishola (CBS) will return with a nurse who decided last season that high achievement required her to become a physician. Ratched (Netflix) will likely have more battle-axe and other stereotypes. And otherwise, the prime-time landscape will be dominated by physician-centric shows, including the new Good Sam (CBS) and Doogie Kamealoha, M.D. (Disney+)
The sitcom’s first season (2019-20) focused on the relationship between the Nigerian-born nurse Abishola and Bob, the head of a small Detroit sock company. Culture clash was the main theme, but Abishola was also shown to be a tough, skilled patient advocate, notably in helping Bob’s mother recover from a stroke. A downside was Abishola’s obsession with her young son becoming a physician.
The show began airing in the U.S. in December 2020. It has five main characters, and all are new hospital nurses. Each one shows real health knowledge and operates with some autonomy—but not when physicians are present. And without an expert, authoritative major nurse character, Nurses seems to be a missed opportunity.
The fourth season of the hospital drama, which aired in summer 2017, still included the competent emergency nurse Kenny. But as always, every other major character was a physician. And even more than in the past, the show portrayed nurses as mere assistants to the physicians, with limited skills and no autonomy—especially in an egregious plotline in which a seemingly gifted nurse turned out to be a physician.
Netflix’s School Nurse Files presents a nurse as quirky paranormal protector As part of Netflix’s apparent effort to present nurse characters who are as different from each other as possible, school nurse…
Netflix romantic drama Virgin River features skilled advanced practice nurse The new series features APRN Melinda Monroe, who flees L.A. to join the solo practice of a senior physician in northern California….
Nursing will be back to prime time. The big news is Netflix’s release of Ratched, but the streaming giant will also offer more of the actually-pretty-good portrayal of nursing on romantic drama Virgin River. And it seems there will always be the BBC’s Call the Midwife, with its strong portrayals of nursing. But on the new show Transplant, about a refugee trauma physician, nurses are peripheral helpers. And otherwise, the landscape will be dominated by other physician-centric dramas, ranging from Chicago Med, which has several skilled nurses, to Grey’s Anatomy, which never has.
Creator Ryan Murphy describes the new show, about the iconic battle-axe nurse from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, as “an imagining of how this monster was created.” We have long feared the series will reinforce the harmful stereotyping of the original, which linked female nursing authority with malevolence. Will Ratched give viewers a sense that nurses are anything more than disturbed clinical abusers?
The Resident features a skilled nurse advocate The Fox hospital drama’s first season highlighted some real problems in the U.S. health care system, including corruption and harmful errors. But the show also…
More strong nursing in season 6 of the BBC’s Call the Midwife The sixth season of the BBC’s Call the Midwife, from 2017, featured more portrayals of expert nurse midwives saving lives and improving…
Nurses show skill and some authority in early seasons of Chicago Med The first two seasons of the NBC hospital drama (2015-2017) focus on physician characters who generally direct clinical care. But…
Dr. Ken refills prescription for nursing stereotypes The final season of the ABC sitcom Dr. Ken presented nurse character Clark as the admiring “work wife” and clinical lapdog of the physician lead character. That portrayal…
Hawaii Five-0 episode features strong, skilled nurse character A 2017 episode of the CBS show’s reboot series is about Five-0’s efforts to protect a comatose witness from heavily armed killers. The witness’s…
CBS’s Pure Genius saw the future of hospital care–and it was an exclusive boutique! The futuristic hospital drama, which ended in 2017, offered a hopeful vision of care in which superstar physicians…
In alternative Kimmy Schmidt universe, the bunker is full of weak nursing students One of the final episodes of the sitcom Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, which Netflix released in January 2019, presents an alternative world…