With three new medical dramas about nurses premiering on television this year, nursing advocates had high hopes for 2009. More positive and more accurate portrayals of the rigorous and challenging work of nurses could inspire more people to enter the profession and help bring about a better prepared nursing worforce in the future, they believed.

But even though nurse characters have stepped into the limelight this year, they still fail to live up to their potential as role models, critics say.

Peggy McDaniel, B.S.N., R.N., a nurse clinician at CareFusion, a medical device company in San Diego, has mixed feelings about Mercy, an NBC drama about three hospital nurses that premiered last month.

On one hand, the nurse characters do more than pass trays and clean bodily fluids—an improvement over many medical dramas and comedy shows on television that feature nurses in subservient roles, she writes in a blog entry affiliated with the American Journal of Nursing. On Mercy, nurses save lives and challenge authority figures, which she finds “both realistic and inspiring.”

On the other, Veronica Flanagan Callahan, the lead character, has an abrasive disposition that leaves McDaniel yearning “for a more positive portrayal of competent nursing.” William Swarens, R.N.C., a perioperative clinical educator at MultiCare MedicalSystems in Tacoma, Wash., agrees. Mercy, he says, “does not put nurses in the best light.” Swarens adds: “Nurses and hospitals have to be portrayed as they really are—not this fantasy.”

Susan Jacobs, R.N., M.S.N., M.B.A., a former emergency-room nurse who lives in Illinois, also faults the show for being unrealistic. She cites, for example, nurse characters who care for patients in evening gowns and who have sex with their colleagues “in the blink of an eye in some utility or unused treatment room.”

Nurses and nurse advocacy groups have issued similar complaints about inappropriate or unethical behavior in Nurse Jackie, a dark comedy on Showtime about an emergency-room nurse in New York City, and, HawthoRNe, a health drama on TNT about a hospital’s chief nursing officer. Both nurse-centered dramas premiered in June.

What do you think? Do the benefits of starring roles for nurse characters outweigh the inaccurate or inappropriate behavior the characters sometimes engage in? Share your views at nursing@rwjf.org!

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