TV Medicine

Let’s talk TV for a minute. Medical dramas, to be exact. I love E.R. (the show). Or is it loved? Whatever. The fact is E.R. was an awesome show. I mean, come on. George Clooney, Noah Wyle. Hello! Spoiler Alert: I cried like a little bitch baby when Dr. Greene died.They made the world of medicine seem so cool and fun and interesting. But the show concentrates mostly on the doctors. Throughout the show’s run, there were only three main characters that were nurses. The rest were secondary characters. And one of the nurses became a doctor. Like nursing wasn’t good enough! Pshaw!

And then there is Grey’s Anatomy. I love the storylines (although this season is seriously craptastic!). But where are the nurses? There was Nurse Olivia, but she was George’s syph nurse. Not a shining example of nursing. There was the strike with the nurses where they all acted like little children towards the docs and then the docs totally belittled them. And what is up with all the doctors acting they are nurses? Really? Nurses are the ones that are typically in charge of comforting patients. Not that there is anything wrong with doctors stepping up! It’s just not…common.

Just so you know, I do have a point to this particular rambling. My whole point of this post is that before I really decided to become a nurse, I thought nursing life would be like TV shows. But is anything on TV really real? Reality TV isn’t even that real. Nursing is completely different, but it’s a better type of different. I am not medically diagnosing anyone. My job is ADPIE. I make nursing diagnoses. I get to focus more on the person as an individual; a person with not only physical needs, but emotional ones as well. And that is awesome.

P.S. It is so much fun to watch Grey’s and completely pick it apart. HIPAA violation here, incorrect pronunciation of a medical term there.