Come on now, what hospital nurse anywhere has the time to go and have a sit-down meal in a fine dining restaurant with a physician during her shift?! I thought most of us had to eat on the run, or skip meals all together, so that we could attend to our patients, especially where there is an obvious shortage of nurses.
Nurse Jackie may be taken from the journals of an actual ER nurse, but where is the reality of the professional life of a nurse? What ER is so slow that the nurses have time to go have a sit-down meal, a quickie with the pharmacist, and spend time reviewing the days events lying on a pew in the chapel, all in the same day?
How come there’s a shortage of nurses in this hospital? Maybe the word hasn’t gotten out that the nurses get power meals, lots of time for infidelity and drug-seeking behavior, and long breaks away from the unit with a co-worker.
What experienced nurse allows an idiot physician get away without making a full assessment, ordering the tests and scans she suggests, and then lets a patient die from a hematoma? Why didn’t she find another physician to override this poor judgement? Where was her alleged temper and badass attitude then? And then she lets the same idiot get away with squeezing her breast?!
In one shift, she forges the dead patient’s signature, snorts her pain meds, shows some compassion for her patients, flushes the ear, robs a patient, and takes free vicodin from her pharmacist friend. All in a day’s work for a nurse!
Perhaps this show will have some entertainment value, and Edie Falco’s performance is terrific, but this is NOT what nurses need in the midst of a critical nursing shortage.
It’s a pilot episode, and so it throws in as many issues as it can to win the pitch to the network, but it’s absolute overload. Each issue deserves to be developed into a story that brings out the reality of the ER. Perhaps future episodes will develop the characters and the plots, but I don’t see it becoming something nurses will watch or support.
To be fair, there is great potential for this to be a great story about the life of a nurse in the ER, but let’s be realistic. I’m sure we could all identify with wanting to flush that ear so the bastard doesn’t get it back, but we don’t act on it. Why not just make it the fantasy scene it should be?
The organ donor story has been done so many times, but to see a nurse forge this signature sets the whole issue back a hundred years!
Nurse Jackie has her demons to deal with. Nurses are human beings and we all have a story. Pain is just one thing that far too many nurses have to deal with, but a whacked out, drugged up nurse who sleeps with the pharmacist, allows herself to be a victim of sexual harassment, doesn’t advocate for her patient and robs another, is not what nurses want to be represented as on television.
Nurses are not all saints, and there is quite enough drama everyday to fill the scripts. It isn’t all sugar and spice and boring. The day in the life of a nurse, in any field, could make great TV drama. The patients, the doctors, the interactions between nurses, can all be developed into great plots with ongoing story lines.
The nursing shortage presents enough drama on its own and Nurse Jackie is way off the mark on this one! I don’t think SHOWTIME will be attracting a lot of nurse viewers for this one, and it’s too bad, it could be a good show.
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About the Author: Kathy Quan, RN, BSN, PHN is an accomplished writer and author of four books including: The Everything New Nurse Book and 150 Tips and Tricks for New Nurses. Kathy has been in the nursing profession for over thirty years, and is very passionate about patient education and mentoring new nurses.
Click here to read more on Kathy Quan.