Nursing Lessons You Learned from a TV or Movie Nurse

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You wouldn’t think that TV and the movies would be a good venue to learn life lessons…especially in the nursing profession, considering how many of these characters are, well, shall we say “overly dramatic?” They have to be…otherwise, why are they on the big screen? However, just because fictional nurses may be over the top on occasion doesn’t mean they are incompetent. Some of your most important nursing lessons may come from the likes of these characters.

Enemy nurses quickly become your friends

There may very well be some cat fighting, misunderstandings, and bad blood between you and the senior nurse in the beginning. However, as Scrubs proved with Carla Espinosa and Elliot Reed, just because you start off on the wrong foot doesn’t mean your relationship is always going to stay the same. Elliot Reed’s flightiness took some getting used to and offended Carla early on in the series. However, it wasn’t long until she and Carla made up and became friends. This can be your story! Be patient and your nemesis may come around.

Nurses always advocate for patients, no matter what’s going on at home

The public tends to believe that a doctor or nurse with a pathetic personal life is not going to be much help in the hospital. However, this is not usually the case, and this is a recurring theme in TV shows like Nurse Jackie, where the protagonist succeeds as a brilliant patient advocate, who is almost always right professionally, in spite of her hazardous personal life. Nurses deal with the same stress as anyone in any profession, and they may have a whole host of personal problems they keep private. What matters is that they learn to compartmentalize and put the patient’s interest first. This will be a requirement in your own future job because at that important moment of life or death, it’s not going to be about you. You have a job to do and you’re going to clear your mind of all other distractions. Helping and “healing” a patient may even be a way of healing your own pain and inner turmoil. This is life-saving work and it is very good for the soul.

Brilliant nurses don’t have to become doctors

E.R. showed us the best of both worlds for nursing lessons. We saw Abby Lockhart (Maura Tierney) progress from an OB/GYN nurse, to a medical student to an intern to a resident doctor over the course of the show. This should teach you that in medicine your options are always open. What really is amazing though is to watch Carol Hathaway’s professional journey, in which she determines that she wants to go to medical school and become a doctor, but then eventually changes her mind when she sees that her job as a nurse and patient advocate is more personally important to her than earning a doctor’s title.

What Nurse Ratched says, goes

Last and definitely least, there’s Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. She reinforces to patients and doctors one universal truth that can never be questioned. Don’t mess around with nurses. They can be nice and help you through a crisis…but they can also make your day miserable if you cross them!