An article in the August issue of the Journal of Advanced Nursing examines the image of nurses on YouTube. A small group of English and Irish researchers found that many of the top hits that come up when you enter ‘nurses’ or ‘nursing’ into a YouTube search portray nurses in a derogatory way.
“Our study found that nurses were depicted in three main ways – as a skilled knower and doer, a sexual plaything and a witless incompetent,” says co-author Dr Gerard Fealy, from the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Systems at University College Dublin, Ireland.
The classic ‘dumb blonde’ nurse on Mad TV.
Ninety-six videos were included after preliminary analysis of the first 50 hits for each word. The top 10 – attracting between 61,695 and 901,439 hits each - were then analysed in greater detail.
Is it any suprise that in the four (out of the top 10) videos posted to YouTube by nurses themselves, nurses were depicted as educated, smart and technically skilled – like in this rap video made by nurses in the University of Alabama Hospital ER.
The other six videos in the top 10 showed nurses as sexual playthings and/or dimwitted objects of comedy.
The researchers end with a call to nursing’s professional bodies to lobby legislators to protect the profession from undue negative stereotyping (which seems, to Nurse Uncut, an unlikely result!)
How do you feel about these stereotypes? Do they bother you? Do you ever encounter this type of ‘dumb nurse’ image in real life? What about the ubiquitous porn images of nurses – do patients ever make remarks along these lines?
Image credits: You Tube
I tend to find a more balanced search result list than you describe when I search ” nursing” ( or similar) on YouTube. There’s a lot of good and positive results too..
What bothers me more than the comedic dimwit or the sexual plaything (both as laughable as each other) is the image of the worn-out and disempowered nurse.. who thinks much but does little. That’s the stereotype that drives me NUTS!
Perhaps they do nothing because they feel powerless. I know I do, but after a while you lose all hope, then you just don’t care any more because you become immune to it. Yes it is time to get out.
Oh sorry! I am having a bad day, week, month and year. No my life is a mess because I became a nurse. So maybe I should make a video and put it on You Tube to show the world what I think of the profession that conned me into spending money going into nursing, only to find I can’t get a job because they claim I don’t have enough experience. What a joke. How do they expect you to get experience if you can’t get a job? I have had enough of the lies about a shortage of nurses and I won’t be hanging around for 13 years when there will be a real crisis in nursing. When I get out I won’t be coming back and I will never believe the lies about a shortage of nurses ever again.
I undersStand what you’re saying. Isn’t it sad. I’be only been a nurse less than 5 years but have recently gone part time at the hospital. I have picked up part time work NOT in a hospital ( home care RN) for my balance and sanity! It’s an EXHAUSTING job (hospital full time RN) which turns most people a bit tired/cynical/ disempowered. There are very few who nurse full time and remain the angels that they were when they entered the profession.
I don’t blame them for the cynicism and exhausted demeanour. Look at the jobs we undertake. It’s truly unbelievable at times, just the sheer volume of our daily tasks and the responsibility on our shoulders from day one.
Fay, try home care nursing part time … I swear, you get to relax and enjoy giving care and get paid the same as a hospital