Who is this? SHORTSTORIES

What Movies Get Wrong About Being A Nurse

Probably the most fallacious depiction of nurses is the portrayal of their relationship with physicians. Primarily, and most glaringly incorrect, is that the physicians are the ones who perform the procedures while the nurse serves as their “assistant” handing them instruments and running errands.

Nurses are also depicted as less knowledgeable. Everyone knows a physician goes through years of training before practicing medicine, but nurses also go through years of training before they are licensed to practice. The schools are different, but nursing is a highly skilled profession despite the media’s depiction of the nurse as a glorified handmaiden.

Chances are if you’re in the nursing profession you know exactly who this is. If you don’t know but you think the photo looks a little bit like a mug shot, you’re right on target.

This is RaDonda Vaught, the most famous (or infamous) nurse in America today. Correction: former nurse. You can’t be a nurse when you’ve been convicted of negligent homicide and gross neglect of an impaired adult.

Despite her felony convictions (she was at least acquitted of reckless homicide), professional organizations have lined up in her defense and support, ranging from the American Bar Association to the National Medical Association, the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, the American Hospital Association, the Institute for Safe Medication Practices, and the American Nurses Association. After her conviction, a Change. org petition urging clemency for Vaught amassed more than 200,000 signatures practically overnight. Tennessee’s governor, where this case erupted, is on record as opposed to clemency.

It all started with the admission of 75-year-old patient Charlene Murphey to Vanderbilt University Medical Center on Dec. 24, 2017. Two days later, Vaught, a registered nurse, got orders to administer a sedating drug to Murphey prior to an MRI as an aid to help her lie motionless during the scan. By accident she gave the patient a paralyzing drug. Cardiac arrest quickly ensued, and although Murphey was resuscitated, she sustained brain damage and died the following day after being taken off life support.

Vaught immediately reported her error and was fired in January 2018. Then in 2019 she was arrested and charged with Murphey’s death, was further charged with infractions by the Tennessee Dept. of Health’s Board of Nursing, stripped of her nursing license, and fined $3,000. After COVID delays, her trial began in March of 2022.

Evidence showed that the hospital failed to report Vaught’s error to federal or state regulators as required by law, attributing the death to natural causes. Testimony established that Vanderbilt’s 2017 “upgrade” of its computer systems resulted in constant delays in accessing medications from automated dispensing cabinets, so nurses were instructed to use overrides to gain access to medications in a timely manner. While that may seem like a peripheral issue to the basic matter at hand — an inadvertent drug mix-up — it was central to the trail. A Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agent testified that Vanderbilt bore “a heavy burden of responsibility” for the error, but only Vaught was ever penalized. Her conviction resulted in a sentence of 3 years’ probation.

Predictably, the verdict result in a huge backlash, with the entire case labeled as a failure to recognize the basic difference between human error and reckless conduct, and dealt a severe blow to “just culture,” a philosophy designed to identify and correct systemic failures rather than blaming an individual Experts say the outcome of Vaught’s case, criminalizing human error, diminishes patient safety rather than improves it, and hurts the already short-staffed nursing profession. +

In a true life saving emergency, nurses will be doing the chest compression, starting the IV, giving the medications and operating the defibrillator (shocking the patient). The physician will be standing in the room directing the code. It is nothing like the depiction in film where the physician does everything.

Physicians write orders and the nurse goes and completes the order. The relationship is very professional and there is great mutual respect. In film, the nurses are depicted as subservient to the physician and at their every beck and call. There is no physician in their right mind that would command a nurse to go fetch them anything as an order.

In fact, another fallacy in the media is that the physician is male and the nurse is generally female. In the past twenty years the number of female physicians has greatly increased as has the number of male nurses.

The TV stereotype of the cute female nurse flirting with the sexy middle aged doctor is greatly exaggerated but unfortunately still perpetuated by the media. Nothing could be further from the truth.

There are the occasional flings and affairs but in the modern world such behaviors are greatly frowned upon and could potentially destroy a career. It is very rare and when it does occur it generally ends in scandal. Sorry guys, the naughty nurse is just a Halloween costume!

The skill set of the two professions are very different but nursing requires a great deal of intelligence and critical thinking no different from a physician. In the media, it is the physician who saves the day and recognizes the diagnosis. In reality, the nurse recognizes and treats as many life threatening symptoms without accolades or recognition.

I have heard nurses say that the series Nurse Jackie is the closest representation of what a nurse truly does. Of course, she is depicted as a drug addict sleeping around on her husband, but the actual nursing work she performs is fairly accurate at times in the fictional depiction of the series. It’s still a long way from accurate but as movies and media go, Nurse Jackie is closer to accurate than most nurse depictions in the media.

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