The hospitals or doctors offices we see on TV or in the movies rarely depict what those settings are actually like, and more than that, they usually don’t accurately display what it’s like to be a doctor or nurse.
Kelli Dunham, a nurse, stand-up comic and LGBT health advocate, has found that the entertainment business does a terrible job of showing what it’s really like to work as a nurse, and she wrote about it for NPR.
Whether it be the sexy nurse stereotypes (Halloween costumes don’t help on that front), romantic drama between nurses and doctors, or simply dumbing down how much work nurses are really doing in alongside doctors, it’s just not realistic. Shows like HBO’s Getting On and Fox’s The Mindy Project and House all do a poor job of capturing the reality of the profession, according to Dunham.
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But unexpectedly, she has found some relief with the character Baymax in Disney’s Big Hero Six.
“You know your profession has an image problem when you point to a balloonish animated robot doll and say, ‘Yes, that’s good. That accurately reflects what I do on a daily basis. More representations like that, please.'”
Baymax might not look like any nurses you know, but unlike most nurse characters in the media he actually provides nursing care. He assesses the health condition of his charge, the boy-genius Hiro, makes recommendations related to his health and teaches him about his neurochemical processes.
Once Hiro reprograms Baymax with fighting capabilities, Baymax becomes Hiro’s terrifying defender. If you’ve ever heard a nurse on the phone with an insurance company insisting that a patient get needed care paid for, you know this is not a misplaced metaphor.
Dunham isn’t the only one calling attention to the fictional discrepancies in her field.
For 13 years the non-profit advocacy organization Truth About Nursing has been researching and documenting nurse representations in popular culture and has come to the conclusion that “the vast gap between what skilled nurses really do and what the public thinks they do is a fundamental factor underlying most of the more immediate apparent causes of the [nursing] shortage [including], understaffing, poor work conditions, [and] inadequate resources for nursing research and education.”
When nurses are actually doing an incredible job taking care of patients, saving lives in some cases, that’s what should be highlighted by the characters on screen, Dunham explains. And that’s why she’s pleased to see the creation of Baymax.
“Baymax’s programming won’t allow him to disengage until the patient has answered, ‘Are you satisfied with your care?’ in the affirmative,” she concluded.
