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The Lost Opportunities of the Pioneering Show The Nurses

2007; Wolters Kluwer; Volume: 29; Issue: 9 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1097/01.cot.0000275520.87526.63

1548-4688

Andrew Holtz,

Film in Education and Therapy

“Return with Us Now to Those Thrilling Days of Yesteryear!” Those words from the opening of the old Lone Ranger radio and then television series might also apply to the way many nurses regard their reflection in primetime TV shows: Things looked better in the old days. It's not just nostalgia; academic analyses of the content of TV shows indicate that the high point for nurses came and went four decades ago. P.J. Haylock grew up in a small town in Iowa. She remembers twisting the dial to tune in The Nurses on CBS. “The only nurses I knew were the school nurse or the nurses who worked in the doctors' offices, and they didn't really do a whole lot in those days,” she said in an interview. “And so when this TV show came on and it had nurses in a big city, and one of the nurses was a student nurse, and she was so pretty, I empathized with her. They showed nurses actually interacting with patients, and with doctors. They showed they had a role, and there was clearly a distinction between what nurses did and what doctors did.” P.J. is now Pamela J. Haylock, RN, MA, a well-known oncology nursing consultant, currently also a doctoral student at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston School of Nursing. Did that positive TV vision of nursing play a role in her decision to become a nurse? “I think it might have,” she said. Doctors in Supporting Roles The Nurses aired from 1962 to 1965. Shirl Conway played head nurse Liz Thorpe, and a very young Zina Bethune played student nurse Gail Lucas. There were doctors, too, but only in supporting roles. “From the very beginning we wanted to make it clear that these were not subservient positions,” Zina Bethune recalled in an interview for this article. Although she was only 14 when she auditioned for the show's producers, she understood that her character had a strong backbone and a willingness to fight for what she believed was right. “[The character] really had this definite idea about ‘How It Should Be,’ and she wanted to live up to that,” Bethune said. “That's pretty difficult when the realities around you don't necessarily support the principles you want to adhere to. That was, in essence, the basis of her conflicts almost all the time.” In one episode, a pre-“Star Trek” William Shatner played Gail Lucas' love interest, Dr. Adam Courtland. “There's a scene where he expects her to just fall in line, but she says, ‘Hey, I don't walk four paces behind you. I'm just as important in this process.’” Neither nurse character was shy in her dealings with physicians, especially when her analysis of a patient's situation didn't mesh with the doctor's orders. “They were rather independent about that. That's where Gail Lucas would want to step in and say, ‘Wait a minute, I'm working with this patient. I know what's going on. The doctor's giving an order that is not going to help this patient.’ “What this show did was really allow us as characters to show that side of the nursing profession,” Bethune said. “These women were strong professionals. They were not only creative, but had a sound basis for their thoughts.” Not surprisingly, nurses in the TV audience liked what they saw: Characters that made a substantial contribution to medical care. The show was a pioneering series in many ways. It was the first network TV series in the US to star two women, and have men play only supporting roles. Still, Bethune says that she didn't jump at the role. Although she was working regularly in television, she was also building a career as a dancer, and she was afraid the demands of a weekly series would push dance aside. But her agent urged her to take the role. She finally agreed; and then committed herself to learning about the real world of nurses, shadowing them in a hospital for weeks. Breaking Taboos The nurses on the show weren't merely one-dimensional heroes; some episodes showed nurses failing. One guest character became addicted to drugs, during a time when the issue of impaired health care professionals was rarely aired in public. Another guest character turned out to have a secret past: She was a German immigrant who had taken part in Nazi medical experiments during World War II, thus allowing the show to grapple with issues of patients' rights and medical ethics. There were also episodes dealing with abortion before the Supreme court's Roe v. Wade decision. And there were shows in which African-American characters encountered prejudice in the hospital. Bethune credits producer Herbert Brodkin (1912–1990) with daring to break taboos. In the long-term, though, The Nurses failed to permanently break the standard TV mold of dominant physicians and subservient nurses, and nurse characters generally receded into the shadows again after the show's run. “That surprised me,” Bethune said, “because the show was successful. It was on for three years. And that may be why it's now largely forgotten, because it wasn't followed through or followed up by anyone else.” Change to Include Doctors And in the third year of the show, a change was made to include doctors more prominently, she said. “The head of CBS decided that maybe we should have men as regulars on the show. The name was changed to The Doctors and the Nurses, and that's when the ratings fell.” Evidently, it was not the right decision.” After the show went off the air, Zina Bethune continued in show business, appearing in many other TV shows and some films, including Martin Scorsese's first feature-length film, Who's That Knocking at My Door, opposite Harvey Keitel. She continued dancing, too, establishing a multimedia dance troupe in Los Angeles, called Bethune Theatredanse, and a companion program tailored to disabled children, called Infinite Dreams. In her newest film, last year's Wings of Legacy, she plays a woman near death who passes on her passion for dance to a young woman who uses a wheelchair. Yet she hasn't forgotten the TV series of her adolescence. And, she says, neither have its fans. “The people who were avid fans, and who really appreciated the pioneering efforts of this show, have remained fans and have often lamented that no one picked up the banner and continued. “When I look at shows that have nurses now, I go, ‘Huh? What happened?’ They are not being represented in a way that I think is accurate.”Figure: Zina Bethune today, as Artistic Director for Bethune Theatredanse and Infinite Dreams, a dance program for mentally and physically disabled children, for which she has been recognized by Presidents Clinton, Reagan, and Bush, as well as Los Angeles Mayors Richard J. Riordan and Tom Bradley and Senator Dianne Feinstein.This is the third of a three-part series on the portrayal of nurses in the media. Part I appeared in the April 10th issue and Part II was in the April 25th issue.Figure: Scenes from The Nurses, with Zina Bethune and Shirl Conway; and a 1964 cover of TV Guide (there was also an earlier one in 1962) that featured the show.