There is Florence Nightingale. Then there is the loathsome Nurse Ratched from “One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest.” Depictions of nurses on the silver screen have shifted dramatically over the last century, according to a new study. And those portrayals have affected nurses in real life.
Australian researchers watched more than 280 films made over the last 100 years, and reviewed the plots of another 36,000 to learn how nurses have been depicted on the silver screen. Starting at the dawn of the film era, nurses were generally seen as the heroine or love interest, someone who selflessly cares for others, according to the report. During the women’s liberation movement in the 1960s, nurses began cropping up in psychological thrillers and as sociopaths, according to the report authors.
Modern films tend to depict nurses as self-confident and powerful-a much better view than had earlier been taken. Still, authors warn that nurses need to be aware of how they’re being portrayed in the cinema. With roughly 26% of the 280 some films featuring an overtly sexual characterization of nurses, study author Dr. David Stanley from the Curtin University of Technology in Perth says there are negative implications for the nursing profession.
The full report, titled “Celluloid angels: a research study of nurses in feature films 1900-2007,” was published in the October issue of the Journal of Advanced Nursing.
