Image: Ocean Illustration | Veer

What would a Halloween party be without a naughty nurse? What porn movie isn’t complete without the rather large-chested and always available nurse? And then, of course, there are the soap operas (and seemingly legit evening medical dramas) with the pouty-lipped nurses who are out to nab Dr. Right. Is it any wonder why nurses are fed up with how we’re portrayed in the media?

It’s not as if nurses don’t have a sense of humor. Heck, you have to be able to laugh to do what we do, right? But there’s a line—and it’s not that fine a line—between laughing with nurses and laughing at them. And when people are laughing at them, you can bet there’s less respect for the profession. Nursing isn’t the only profession that has stereotypes – librarians and policewomen are just two examples.

We nurses have to do our part to educate people about what the profession is really about. We certainly have our work cut out for us! Take a look at this list, then roll up your sleeves!

Here are 10 nurse depictions (with some horrifying examples!) we wish would go away:

1. Naughty Halloween Nurse
2. Addicted Nurse
3. Sex Object Nurse
4. Celebrities as Hot Nurses
5. Fetish Nurses
6. Nurse Ratched
7. Sexy (and Usually Gay) Male Nurse
8. Servant Nurse
9. Soap Opera Nurse
10. Bimbo/Helpless Nurse

FIRST: We’ve NEVER dressed like that.

Image courtesy FOX Broadcasting Company

How many times have you paused, shook your head at some random situation at work, and said, “I can’t believe this is happening.” And that’s real life.

We thought you might need a laugh at moments like this, so we dug through clips from TV shows spanning more than a half century to find these 23 unbelievable hospital scenes. Some are so crazy we can’t imagine how the actors kept a straight face.


Medical Dramas of the 1950s and ’60s

If anyone believed that the doctors in Ben Casey represented real doctors, hopefully they wouldn’t have believed the same thing about the nurses. The only nurse we see regularly is Ms. Wills, and she’s never referred to by her first name throughout the entire series. She never takes off her uniform, even when hanging out with other staff members (in street clothes) off-duty. In this episode of Ben Casey from the early ’60s, nurses are portrayed as very distractable (around minute 4:00 in the clip) or very befuddled and easily confused (around 5:15). Perhaps studios didn’t have research assistants in those days.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The 70s, 80s and 90s –>

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