It seems that nurses and nursing are a hot topic finally in the world of television. Apparently there was enough noise made to the powers that be and now for some strange reason people making television shows are interested in hearing the story told from the Nurse’s perspective. (It’s about DAMN time)

Nurse Jackie spawned an interesting debate amongst my fellow nurse-bloggers out there. It is a Showtime television show portraying Jackie, a nurse in the ED (I think?), played by Edie Falco. It had the makings of all the right stuff.

A strong, level-headed, motivated patient advocate that didn’t take no for an answer. She played all the right cards by standing up for her patients, high-octane, low-drag, no frills ER nurse that we all can relate to. Right up to the point where she was snorting some sort of prescription drug and being felt up by her co-workers?

Kim over at Emergiblog spawned quite the conversation about this new show. I whole heartedly agree with the concept of the show, but cannot get my mind around why they have to have this character be a drug addict of some sort while being a part of the warped-like mindset of the public’s depiction of nurses being some sort of abused sex object.

Now my opinions are of course solely based on the video clips and previews I’ve seen, and yes I’m well aware that it IS just a TV show, not the real thing. The more talk, the more drama, the more the ratings go up. Blah, Blah, Blah.

I still think they could have done a bang-up job without the drug addiction and sexual antics.

Enter HawthoRNe.

This is a TNT production starring Jada Pinkett Smith as the (CNO)Chief Nursing Officer at a hospital manning the everyday nursing front lines. It stretches the truth a tad bit having her portray a CNO that seems to be getting her hands quite dirty on the front lines of the patient bed side (the last time I checked, most of the CNO’s I’ve met and worked for/with don’t even wear scrubs anymore).

Other than the CNO ‘stretch’, it seems to have the ‘goods’.

She’s a nurse who cares passionately about her job, her fellow nurses, and of course her patients. She stands up and fights the good fight wherever and whenever needed against whom ever.

The boon to this show?

http://i.cdn.turner.com/v5cache/TNT/flash/tnt_player.swf

http://www.tnt.tv/dramavision/?oid=47783&eref=sharethisUrl

There is a 3-5 second snippet (on the video) about a male nurse working along the front lines! (He gets mistaken for a doctor at a patient’s bedside)

It seems that HawthoRNe has one up on Nurse Jackie at first blush simply because there is no illegal or negative activity. I once again am basing my judgment on just the video clips I’ve seen.

I also do not subscribe to Showtime, so I don’t  foresee me watching Nurse Jackie anytime soon.

I however will be setting aside time to take a better look at HawthoRNe.

I’d love to hear your thoughts Nurses.