Nurse Jackie Revival: A Nurse’s Insightful Perspective – Part 2: The Job

When I rewatch episodes of Nurse Jackie as a now practicing emergency room RN, I laugh. A lot.

ER doctors performing open abdominal surgeries in Manolo Blahniks? No. I mean, I’ve never practiced in NYC, so maybe the culture is different there, but I have worked in many other ERs across the country, and I’ve never once seen any clinician wearing pumps, much less Manolos. There are too many body fluids to contend with. It’s Crocs, Hokas, or Danskos if you’re on the floor. Also, ER doctors don’t do surgery. Surgeons do surgery.

A nurse finding time for sex? AND post cuddles? No. ER nurses can barely carve out the time for a satisfying bathroom break, much less meaningful romantic relationship building.

ER staff sharing a champagne toast while euthanizing a past colleague, administrators hiding abandoned babies in their office, and endless quantities of untracked narcotics—Nurse Jackie is far from a realistic depiction of real nursing. It sometimes veers into outright fantasy. But would you rather watch an ER nurse have glamorous lunches at Le Cirque or spend two hours poking at a keyboard? I choose gossip at Le Cirque. Of course, the showrunners had to take some creative liberties, and I don’t fault them for that.

However, despite its stumbles in representing the day-to-day job, the show does succeed in addressing higher-level issues related to nursing. It tackles the stuff that really matters. It explores themes often discussed in nursing, like the treatment of nurses by patients and families, lateral violence, work/life balance, understaffing, sexual harassment, and substance abuse. It addresses ancient hospital hierarchies, intergenerational relationships, and how healthcare folks navigate a system that’s often in direct opposition to their professional oaths. And this is the juicy stuff we want people to see and identify with. This is the stuff that helps shift the public’s perception of nursing.

I’m not saying it’s always on the right side of these themes. One example is the scene where an angry family member hits Jackie. He yells, throws a fit, and clocks Jackie in the face. And she takes it on the nose (literally). When her nursing student, Zoey, expresses outrage—Jackie replies, “It’s part of the job,” rubbing her jaw and moving on with her day. That was a missed opportunity to pause and find a way to say, “Actually, that isn’t OK.” But also, the show initially aired almost twenty years ago. The culture was different. I expect the reboot to be more dialed into a more updated view of workplace violence.

So, no. Jackie doesn’t accurately represent real-world nursing because real-world nursing is harder. Time to self-reflect in the hospital chapel? Please. Patients passing away peacefully sans monitor alarms or multiple rounds of CPR? Um, no. Free Vicodin? If only. (THAT’S A JOKE, BOARDS OF NURSING). Jackie does, however, give us a more honest and humanizing representation of nursing’s challenges than the vast majority of other medical shows. And for that, I’m thankful.

Being a nurse at All Saints Hospital seems like a cakewalk compared to real life. Are they hiring?

Check Back Next Monday: Part 3: The System