The Networks Created the "Docnurse"

Okay, so after about 10 hours stiffening into stone sitting in front of a computer screen, I finally decided to get up and move inside, away from reading anything about healthcare. I want light, mindless entertainment. So I flop down on the couch and pick up the remote to begin scanning tonight’s programs. I click through the stations like a man. But the remote always returns to the same station.

Oh God! Grey’s Anatomy. I love Grey’s Anatomy. Why do I love it? There’s nothing like it in the real world. But that’s why I love it. It’s so romantic. It paints such heroes. Heroes I believed in when I was a teenager. Doctors who fall apart when a patient dies, doctors who smooth a patient’s brow for long minutes, doctors who forgo dinner at the local pub with their friends in order to play checkers with a patient… What?

Doctors? Where are the damn nurses? Nurses do all those good things. Doctors Cure. Nurses Care! How did they take all those great qualities of nurses and give them to doctors? How did they make doctors MORE by giving them the qualities that they used to make us LESS? We’re the caretakers, nurturers – we’re the ones who know the families.

What does a hospitalist who just met a patient in the hospital know about his family? And what about health insurance? You think all those wonderful qualities they’ve just given all those doctors can be tabulated, calculated, and paid for? What will they call it? After all, what about the bottom line?

The point is they cast a lot more women as doctors, because there are a lot more women doctors, but it’s also because doctors have an elevated status. They’re important. I mean I know everyone says they trust nurses more, but still they RESPECT doctors. So now, movie makers and TV producers have decided to take nurses best qualities, add brain power (which they don’t know we have) up the status and call this new hybrid doctors. Well, they’re not doctors. Nurse Practitioners maybe, but not doctors.

Don’t misunderstand, I’m not saying there are no doctors like that, no good doctors, there are. But they don’t work in hospitals because insurance won’t pay for such holistic treatment. I mean, between Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice, they’re going to have us all believing most doctors are human. Thank God for “House.” Suddenly, it hit me. It’s true. I get the misunderstanding. Nobody knows what a nurse does. Especially TV producers. So now I figure one of the jobs I’ll take on this year is to try to share with everyone what nurses do.

I’d love it if you would all help with suggestions. Just add it to any of our nursing pages. It will be fun. Then I’ll post the composites on “Occupy Healthcare” or other patient sites and we’ll be able to help change the healthcare system. I mean how many people do you think would voluntary go to a hospital if that hospital said, “Sorry, we don’t have enough doctors to staff the floors. After all, there’s a shortage you know. No one wants to teach doctors how to help any more.”

What do you think?

write by foster