Media's Influence on Professional Nursing Identity & Standards

This essay examines the impact of media portrayals on nursing professional identity, using the TV show "Nurse Jackie" as a case study. The essay analyzes how the show's depiction of a flawed nurse, who is addicted to painkillers, has adulterous relationship with a coworker and breaches patient confidentiality, connects with the College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO) standards, particularly concerning therapeutic relationships and accountability. The essay further discusses how such media representations can negatively affect public perception and nursing students' views of their future profession. Ultimately, the essay argues for more realistic and accurate portrayals of nurses in the media to promote a more positive and informed public image of the nursing profession. Desklib provides access to similar solved assignments and resources for students.

Running head: Professional growth assignment 1
Professional Growth Assignment
Author Name(s)
Institutional Affiliation(s)
Author Note

Professional growth assignment 2
Abstract
The nursing profession is uniquely plays a major part in the promotion and improvement of
public health in multi-disciplinary complex environments. However, the nurses’ image has been
at the center of controversy over the years. The fundamental reason for this being that the media
portrays nursing, more so in films and TV shows. Generally, an ideal nurse is known to be a
caring, compassionate, kind and loving professional. However, what the media has portrayed
over the years has been contrary to this image of a nurse. Some TV shows have gone an extra
mile of depicting nurses as cruel and unethical professionals who would put their patients at risk
and break College of Nurses of Ontario (CNO) Standards while others depict nursing as a solely
a female career. The aim of this paper is to demonstrate how media can negatively influence
one’s professional identity and professionalism. In this focus, this paper will be using the Recent
TV show, “Nurse Jackie.”
Keywords: Media, Image, Nursing, TV Show

Professional growth assignment 3
Professional Growth Assignment
The character of Jackie who is an RN nurse is at All Saints’ Hospital is portrayed as
professional with many flaws. Despite being a dedicated nurse, she is depicted as
unaccountable, unprofessional, and unethical with a plethora of personal problems. Jackie’s
addiction to painkillers, adulterous relationship with a coworker and breaching the rules of
patient confidentiality and ethics alludes a bad picture of the entire profession.
Media portrayal on Nursing Profession
According to (Kemppainen, Tossavainen, & Turunen, 2013), nursing is a health
profession where the nurses take a major role in the promotion of health and well-being.
However, the media has in the past portrayed a negative image of the nursing career. Taking the
TV show of Nurse Jackie (Coulter, Feig, Peretz, Buscemi, & Einhorn, 2015). Jackie takes the
character of an RN nurse at All Saints’ Hospital. This character is portrayed as having numerous
professional flaws. Jackie is portrayed as unaccountable, unprofessional, and unethical with a
plethora of personal problems. Jackie also has an addiction to painkillers, she has adulterous
relationship with other workers, breaches confidential rules and ethics rules. Other episodes
show Jackie breaching the CNO standards such as respect for other workers, poor relationship,
uncollaborative, adulterous, and disrespect to other workers.
The connection of TV Show to the CNO practice standard
The CNO Professional Standards revised 2002 provides a comprehensive framework for
informing the nursing profession (College of Nurses of Ontario [CNO], 2002). The framework
broadly outlines the terms of the nursing practice and what is expected from their profession. In
many episodes of the TV show Nurse Jackie, Jackie breaches the Therapeutic Nurse-Client
Relationship CNO standard. The CNO standard requires all nurses to respect, collaborate,

Professional growth assignment 4
establish and maintain positive therapeutic and professional relationship with both their
colleagues and consumers. In this regard, the therapeutic relationships involves a consideration
of clients, colleagues, members of the health teams, and the and employers (CNO, 2002).
Couple examples of these breaches by Jackie include the adulterous relationship Jackie maintains
with pharmacist named Eddie at the All Saints' Hospital and Jackie being very disrespectful and
unprofessional, often yelling at her coworkers out of frustration.
Although the TV show tries to portray Jackie as a strong advocate for her patience it does
a poor job at connecting her advocacy standards to the CNO Accountability standards. The CNO
professional standards requires the nurses need to provide, advocate, facilitate, and promote the
best possible and ultimate care to the clients. It also requires them to be advocates on behalf of
their clients (CNO, 2002). In the TV show Jackie if often not accountable as a nurse.
Throughout the day Jackie takes Percocet which she mixes with the sweetener in the coffee. In
one of the episodes, an unsuspecting coworker drinks Jackie’s coffee and becomes accidentally
ill. In yet another incidence, a sick man collapses outside the hospital where unaware nurse
provides him with Jackie’s spiked sweetener. These examples display poor accountability on the
part of Nurse Jackie. The Canadian Nurses Association (CNA) believes that protection of the
public from any possible harm caused by an incapacity nurse is paramount in addressing
problematic substance use by a nurse (Austin & Boyd, 2010, p. 570). Unfortunately, the show
continues to depict nurses as serious drug addicts who often put their patients and colleges’ lives
at risk. Drug addiction in the field of nursing can lead to serious consequences both to patients
and coworkers.
Effects of the TV Show on the idea about the professional nursing identity

Professional growth assignment 5
The profession of nursing is believed to be virtuous, apart from just being a
knowledgeable career. In contrast, the Nurse Jackie show provides a more nuanced picture. The
study of (Kelly, Fealy, & Watson, 2012) found that the media constructs nurses’ identities by
depicting them as ‘sexual playthings’ and witless incompetent individuals which the same
perception can be derived from Nurse Jackie show. As a nursing student, I also disapprove the
sexual connotations and other negative depiction from the show as the images do not represent
the reality of acute health facilities and it cannot be trusted. Therefore, such cannot negatively
affect my thinking towards the future of my nursing career. However, on public perception,
Jackie’s sexual characters can affect the nursing profession in some ways as the public may lose
their trust in nurses. In my view, I judge the negative stereotypes of nursing on the media as a
call for nursing role modeling to students to clear the negative imaging to aid, shape both the
students and the junior nurses.
In my view, the show does not depict our true nursing identity. The media makes the
public to view us as people who take minor responsibilities, whereas in reality, the public is
amazed at the lot of work that the nurses actually do. Nurse Jackie represents negative conducts
that can greatly impact the general public perception towards the nursing career. For instance,
portraying doctors as doing everything while nurses act as their helper is wrong and untrue. The
public may be influenced by these images and the consequences of such negative depictions can
create a ‘false’ view of the entire profession causing the public to believe that nurses are doctor’s
assistants and the community might think that nurses are less important. As a nursing student, I
believe that the media should evolve and bring more discernable, realistic, and accurate
depictions of nurses on television. The media should recognize its role in the development of
careers instead of destroying them. The role of the media in nursing should be to inform the

Professional growth assignment 6
public on nurses’ assertiveness, intelligence and skilled nursing care as provided to the patients in
both the community and hospitals settings.
Conclusion
This paper aimed to provide an overview of the current position with regard to nurse
public image and their professional identity. The paper brings an insight that although nursing
television programmes are believed to provide positive educational outcomes, students should
not be discouraged by the invisible representation of nurses or the obsolete and negative
stereotypes. Essentially, most shows do not properly depict the identity of professional nursing.
As professionals, nurses are supposed to conform and adhere to the CNO standards of ethics and
accountability among others.

Professional growth assignment 7
References
Austin, W., & Boyd, M. A. (2010). Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing for Canadian
Practice. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.
College of Nurses of Ontario [CNO]. (2002). The CNO Professional Standards, revised - 2002.
Retrieved from https://www.cno.org/globalassets/docs/prac/41006_profstds.pdf
Coulter, A., Feig, P., Peretz, J., Buscemi, S., & Einhorn, R. (2015). Nurse Jackie: TV Show.
LIONSGATE.
Kelly, J., Fealy, G. M., & Watson, R. (2012). The image of you: constructing nursing identities in
YouTube. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 68(8), 1804–1813.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2648.2011.05872.x
Kemppainen, V., Tossavainen, K., & Turunen, H. (2013). Nurses’ roles in health promotion
practice: an integrative review. Health Promotion International, 28(4), 490–501.
https://doi.org/10.1093/heapro/das034