Nursing Shortage Related to Portrayal of Profession on Television Show ‘ER,’ Nurses Group Says

The Center for Nursing Advocacy has begun an e-mail and letter-writing campaign against NBC and the producers of "ER," which the group says perpetuates "long-standing misrepresentations" that are contributing to the nursing shortage, the Washington Post reports. Sandy Summers, executive director of the two-year-old not-for-profit group, said that the program "routinely and inaccurately features doctors usurping" nurses' duties, including using a defibrillator on patients, counseling families at a patient's bedside and transporting patients into the emergency room, according to the Post. In addition, the show's producers decided to have its only nurse character, Abby Lockhart, leave her career in nursing to return to medical school. Such storylines reinforce a "continuing idea that you can be a nurse if you can't be a doctor," Diana Mason, editor-in-chief of the American Journal of Nursing and a board member of the group, said. To date, more than 100 nurses have sent e-mails to NBC and producers of "ER" requesting that nurses be portrayed more accurately instead of as "handmaidens to physicians," Summers said. The advocacy group decided to lobby the show because of its "enormous popularity," Mason said, according to the Post. Last year, a Kaiser Family Foundation study found that "ER" viewers learn about health-related subjects on the show and often later consult with their physicians as a result, while an earlier study found that children's strongest impressions of medical professions were based on what they saw on "ER" and similar shows. However, an unnamed executive affiliated with the show said, "Wasn't there a nursing shortage before 'ER'? I mean, this is a television show, not a documentary" (Boodman, Washington Post, 11/18).