Grey's Anatomy: The Negative Perception Of Nurses

The media is an important part of how we grow up and learn about life. This has an incredible effect on societal views and cultural norms. The media’s portrayal of certain jobs can make children and adults strive to do them but also avoid them. Nurses make up the backbone of the healthcare industry (Mercer University). There are approximately three million nurses in the United States alone. The role of a nurse is to be the first person you see when you walk into a hospital and the last person you see when you walk out. Nurses spend the most time with patients, they are the patient advocates, they educate the patient, monitor patient health, administer medication, and coordinate patient care. However, nurses are still not getting the recognition

Negative portrayal of nursing is destructive to the occupation;, the perception of nurses that are shown on TV creates a negative image for nursing students and a person’s beliefs when they attend a hospital. Although sometimes the nurses are seen as people who save lives and play a vital role in healthcare, the occupation is often sexualized and stereotyped. One of the shows that does this the best is Grey's Anatomy. This is a show about a surgeon's journey through internship, residency, and becoming an attendant. This show has been airing since 2005 and has never changed the way they see nurses. Grey’s Anatomy makes it seem like nurses are unintelligent and unneeded in the healthcare world while also commonly using the word nurse as an insult.

The first episode that ever aired in Grey’s Anatomy is called “A Hard Day’s Night” and this is also the first time that nursing has a negative connotation. The scene starts when two main characters who are interns are arguing about a

Cristina has to sift through the feces of a young boy who swallowed monopoly pieces. Cristina asks Bailey, “Isn’t this more of a nurse’s job?” This degrades a nursing job to one that anyone with a medical degree would never have to go through. Cristina is an intelligent female doctor and this gives viewers the idea that physicians are above small tasks that should be left for nurses to do. This gives the impression that the jobs that nurses do are substandard chores that require little to no education or intelligence. I remember watching this show for the first time at age twelve and thinking about how terrible it would be to be a nurse. I thought that since a strong female like Cristina was saying how useless nursing is then it must be true. In this specific episode, they showed nurses for a total of three minutes and twenty-four seconds and proceeded to degrade nurses five times all during Cristina’s “nurse job” . In this case, not even gender could be blamed for the way Cristina feels about nurses. When the surgeon does the nursing jobs that consist of putting in an IV and administering medication, there is no credit given to the field of nursing. However, when the job at hand is not pleasant then the first thing the surgeon says is something about what it means to