ER (1994-present)   (Archived 2004-2005)

Starring Noah Wyle, Maura Tierney, Laura Innes, Anthony Edwards, George Clooney, Julianna Margulies, Eriq La Salle, Sherry Stringfield, Alex Kingston, Goran Visnjic, Ming-Na, Sharif Atkins, Mekhi Phifer, Paul McCrane, Linda Cardellini, Parminder Nagra, Shane West

Executive Producers: John Wells, Christopher Chulack, Michael Crichton, Jack Orman, Lydia Woodward, Dee Johnson

Constant C Productions and Amblin Television/Warner Bros. Television

NBC

TV-14

Nursing rating		Rating guide: excellent = 4 stars; good = 3 stars; fair = 2 stars, poor = 1 star
Artistic rating

Series Review

Summary (series)

Synopsis (series)

Portrayal of Nursing (series)

Review and Synopsis (2004-05 season)

Portrayal of Nursing (2004-05 season)

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Series Review (Archive 2004-05)

Summary (series) Archive 2004-05

"ER" is arguably the best major health care-related television series since "M*A*S*H," and it is one of the most medically realistic dramatic series ever. When "ER" leaves prime time after well over a decade on the air, it will also have been one of the most popular shows in history. And it will likely continue for years in syndication in the U.S. and around the world. Accordingly, it will continue to have a tremendous influence on how the global public views health care, including nursing. "ER" has generally portrayed nurses as competent, caring health workers and avoided the worst stereotypes. But the show's physician-centric approach has led to a continuing failure to give viewers an accurate or complete picture of the vital role nursing actually plays in modern health care. The few nurses who emerge from the "ER" wallpaper are skilled but essentially fungible, serving mainly as subordinates and romantic foils for the heroic physicians.

Since its inception in 1994, "ER" has focused on the professional development and personal lives of a shifting cast of about 10 emergency department (ED) and surgical physicians, and the personal life of one ED nurse, at "County General," the main public hospital in Chicago. Keys to the show's success have been its adrenaline-happy depiction of emergency procedures, complete with whirling camera work and faster-than-the-speed-of-light technical dialogue, an addictive soap opera approach to the intersecting lives of the main characters, and an amazing ability to regenerate itself with new characters. By the start of the 12th season, none of the original major characters remained. "ER" has also featured some inventive plotting, strong characters, good direction and fine acting. In recent years it has slowed down creatively, certain plot lines have not worked well, and some digressions into the characters' non-work lives have grown tiresome. But "ER" is still capable of engaging work, and it remains very popular.

Synopsis (series) Archive 2004-05

In its early years, "ER" introduced the model that would prove so effective: dedicated, intelligent physicians staggering under the volume and complexity of cases seen in a public Level One Trauma Center, and trying to cope with the effects on their professional and personal lives. The show's plot is too intricate to summarize fully here, but major characters in the early years included John Carter (Noah Wyle), a wide-eyed medical student from a wealthy family who would ultimately become chief ED resident, and who may end up as the most important character in the show's history; Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards), a sensitive, decent ED chief resident whose marriage to an attorney ultimately fell apart and who became, as an attending, the show's moral center; Kerry Weaver (Laura Innes), an insensitive, physically disabled ED senior resident who consistently put herself before her colleagues, and became chief of emergency medicine; Carol Hathaway (Julianna Margulies), whose suicide attempt was featured in the series premiere, was a troubled but tough and committed ED nurse who became a nurse manager; Doug Ross (George Clooney), a hunky pediatric ED resident whose maverick ways would eventually lead to his departure from the hospital and the show, followed by long-time flame Hathaway; Peter Benton (Eriq La Salle), a coldly intense surgical resident who seemed to have a maximum allotment of one smile per season, which he didn't always use; Jeanie Boulet (Gloria Reuben), an earnest, HIV-positive physician's assistant; Susan Lewis (Sherry Stringfield), a down-to-earth ED resident who would leave the show for several seasons; Elizabeth Corday (Alex Kingston), a skilled English surgeon who would ultimately marry Greene; and the great Robert Romano (Paul McCrane), an acid-tongued, highly skilled surgical attending who would become the chief of medicine and who served, along with Weaver, as the show's enduring character-you-love-to-hate.

By the early part of this decade, some of these characters were on their way out, and a new crew was moving in. Ross and later Hathaway departed for the Northwest to raise their twins, Benton left for a job that would allow him to care for his young son, and perhaps most significantly, Greene succumbed to brain cancer, leaving Corday to raise their young daughter alone. Corday returned to County and stayed for some time. But she eventually quit and returned to England rather than accept a demotion for performing a noble but illegal organ donation between two HIV-positive people. Romano lost his arm to a helicopter rotor. Then he spiraled downward, unable to regain his surgical ability, until the show finally killed him off--by having a helicopter fall on him. Lewis returned, for some reason, and later became chief of emergency medicine, though she struggled to be taken seriously. She had a baby with her flight nurse boyfriend. Weaver took advantage of Romano's decline to become chief of medicine, meanwhile coming out as a lesbian and having a baby with her firefighter partner, who soon died in the line of duty. The show anointed Carter, now ED chief resident, to be Greene's successor as its moral and professional heart. In these years Carter thrived professionally, becoming an attending, but did not do as well in his personal life, getting close to a marriage proposal to newcomer Abby Lockhart (Maura Tierney) before pulling back, and making several soul-searching trips to provide care in war-torn Congo. He returned with new girlfriend Kem (Thandie Newton). Their baby was stillborn, and Kem fled, but Carter eventually realized his heart was no longer in Chicago. He left to join Kem at the end of the 11th season, though he will apparently return for short stints. Lockhart, who probably became the show's most important character as Carter faded, was a somewhat confused, alcoholic former OB nurse. She started on the show as a medical student, then settled in as the post-Hathaway major ED nurse character, then reversed course yet again and went back to medical school. She stayed in the ED as an intern and then a resident, clearly putting away nursing things.

Other new characters in the early 00's included Luka Kovac (Goran Visnjic), a Croatian ED attending who replaced Ross as the show's designated hunk, but who had difficulty overcoming the death of his wife and children in the Balkans war. He had a romance with Lockhart, and later with Sam Taggart (Linda Cardellini), a tough but not quite in control single mother who replaced Lockhart as the show's designated major nurse character. Most of Taggart's plotlines focused on her deepening romance with Kovac, and their joint efforts to raise her son Alex. Jing-Mei Chen (Ming-Na), a contemporary of Carter's who had briefly appeared on the show near the start, returned as a resourceful but troubled senior resident. She eventually quit the ED to care for, and ultimately euthanize, her failing father. Michael Gallant (Sharif Atkins) was a bright, decent medical student whose education was funded by his commitment to the U.S. Army, and who was ultimately sent to Iraq. Gregory Pratt (Mekhi Phifer), an often arrogant intern struggling to care for his mentally disabled brother, had a relationship with Chen. Pratt later showed signs of maturing, but refused to pursue the chief resident job. Neela Rasgotra (Parminder Nagra) was a bright but bookish medical student who went through her last year of school alongside Lockhart. She accepted a prestigious internship at the University of Michigan, but quickly bailed out and returned to County, slowly growing more confident. Rasgotra also maintained a tentative long-distance romance with Gallant, who remained in Iraq but had not quite left the show. And Ray Barnett (Shane West) was a brash young intern who struggled to balance his day job with his passion for playing in a rock band.

Portrayal of Nursing (series) Archive 2004-05

"ER" has generally depicted nurses as competent, caring professionals with technical training who contribute to patient outcomes. Unlike many shows, it has resisted showing them as Nurse Ratcheds or sex objects. It has shown some nurses to be men and members of minority groups, though all three of the major nurse characters have been straight white females. Unfortunately, the show's occasional limited efforts to highlight the work of nurses have been overwhelmed by the physician-centric vision that has dominated its first 246 episodes. This includes the hopelessly lopsided nurse:physician major character ratio, the constant portrayal of physicians doing and getting credit for exciting, important work that nurses do in real life, the frequent suggestions that nurses are physician subordinates, the intense focus on physician training while nurses' professional development is ignored, the disproportionate emphasis on the one major nurse character's personal life, and the continued mishandling of slurs against nursing.

The Carol Hathaway and Abby Lockhart characters are, along with "M*A*S*H"'s Margaret Houlihan and "China Beach"'s Colleen McMurphy, among the most influential portrayals of nurses in television history. They are capable, nuanced and generally positive. Hathaway in particular was a strong character and a nurse manager. Hathaway in particular was generally a strong character, and a nurse manager who at a few points actually confronted some real-life nursing issues. Although Lockhart was fairly weak early on, in later seasons she began to show signs of an actual nursing identity, explaining why she chose to remain a nurse rather than continue with medical school, teaching Gallant the ropes, and questioning physician treatment decisions. Unfortunately, Lockhart appeared to grow frustrated with nursing and abruptly reversed course, returning to medical school, which sent the inaccurate message that nurses who wish to pursue graduate education typically do so in medicine rather than nursing. Current major nurse character Taggart is a stronger character with obvious skills and a willingness to advocate for patients, though her toughness has arguably veered into inappropriate aggression. The recurring minor nurse characters, who are well drawn considering their limited screen time, likewise have been shown as caring professionals with skills. For a time those skills seemed to be getting a little more attention, but more recently that has faded.

Over the years, a few episodes of the show have seemed to make an effort to highlight nursing skills or concerns. The Hathaway era included a plotline about a nursing labor dispute, and one episode in which Hathaway had to provide solo care to a critical patient in a dangerous hostage situation. Indeed, as a nurse manager in the early years, Hathaway at different points confronted nursing administration over the floating of nurses away from ED, started an ED clinic and hired a nurse practitioner to work there (that did not last long), and once even quit briefly over the effects of insurance on the ED's practice. At one point, nurse Lockhart gave a brief but spirited defense of her abilities, and at times she also engaged the physicians in meaningful care discussions (though her return to medical school suggested that this may have been part of her outgrowing nursing). And Taggart plotlines have also included one where she provided significant autonomous care to a critically injured rape victim, albeit with disastrous results, and another where she actually made an important catch that an intern had missed.

On the whole, however, these isolated plotlines have been swallowed by the hundreds of hours "ER" has spent telling tens of millions of viewers around the world that physicians provide all significant health care. "ER"'s treatment of nurses as peripheral subordinates has failed to reflect nursing's vital role in clinical health care delivery.

For all its medical realism, "ER" remains a victim of what Kalisch and Kalisch have called "Marcus Welby syndrome": the inaccurate depiction of all significant health care being provided by physicians. As a result, it has frequently shown physicians performing critical nursing tasks, such as triage, patient teaching, giving medications, providing psycho-social support, minute-to-minute care of the critically ill and preventative care such as vaccinations. Nurses are not the only ones affected by this; the show commonly has physicians doing the jobs of social workers and respiratory therapists as well. The show's physician nursing is a natural result of its consistent practice of having only one of the roughly 10 major characters be a nurse, when in a real life Level One Trauma Center the nurse-physician ratio would likely be about 5:5. This 9:1 ratio would make it difficult for the show to portray the two professions' roles accurately even if it wanted to.

Moreover, the show has consistently portrayed nurses as subordinate to the physicians who dominate it, rather than as members of an autonomous profession--as exemplified by its frequent depictions of physicians disciplining and even firing nurses. It's true that Hathaway actually acted as a nurse manager at times in the early years, and Lockhart too was dubbed a "nurse manager," though she did next to nothing with the title. But even Hathaway was at times presented as under the authority of the ED attendings, and since the Hathaway period--which ended in the 6th season--the show has almost never really shown nursing managers. Instead, it frequently tells viewers that physicians direct all care and essentially manage nurses, even if they may have hired some unseen nurse administrator to handle the paperwork. (We understand that the show will, in its 12th season, do what the Center has been urging for years and introduce a real nurse manager, so stay tuned.)

The show also gives viewers little sense of the independent, science-based assessment and intervention that is central to the nursing process. In recent seasons it has occasionally depicted nurses in their patient advocacy role, which can entail questioning physicians' care plans and catching their mistakes. But this has almost always been when the physician is somehow impaired, as by illness or inexperience; otherwise, the nurses tend to lose out in such discussions. "ER" has rarely shown a nurse acting as a primary force in a patient's outcome. Instead, physicians tend to receive all the credit or blame for the results.

Through the end of the 11th season, the show has paid virtually no attention to the professional development of nurses, such as through advanced nursing degrees, research or scholarship. Nurse characters have limited opportunities to display their special knowledge and skills, especially since nursing students are never shown. This stands in stark contrast to the show's obsessive focus on each stage and feature of the physicians' professional development, from medical students through the chief of medicine. Tellingly, Lockhart finally chose a medical career and Hathaway flirted with one, as if to prove that they were worthy of the show's attention despite "only" being nurses. All three major nurse characters have also spent most of their time in romances with the show's physicians, and in a number of episodes, a key role of the minor nurse characters has been to comment idly on the lives of the physicians.

The show has also developed a pattern of mishandling slurs against nursing. Typically, it will have a character who is socially unskilled--perhaps an abrasive attending like Romano or Weaver, an unhappy patient, or a visiting schoolchild--express contempt for nursing. Perhaps the character will suggest that nursing is all about bedpans, or call a female physician a nurse as an insult, or suggest that nurses don't know anything about the prognosis of a major stroke victim, or express fear at the thought of being a nurse but joy at the prospect of being a physician. In response, a nurse character will look hurt, but she will not say anything. Or the remark will be made outside of any nurse's earshot, and no one will question it. The show may think it's helping viewers see how hard it is to be a nurse. But the persistent failure to have any character rebut such slurs will likely lead many viewers to conclude that while the speaker may be mean, what he or she says is essentially correct. It's just not the kind of thing nice people actually say.

Finally, though the show prides itself on being on the cutting edge of social issues and often refers to the budget crisis in public hospitals, it has still paid no serious attention to the current nursing shortage or the short-staffing that drives it. This is a shortage that now constitutes a major threat to global health, but which "ER"'s generally inadequate portrayal of nursing has done little to address.

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Most Recent (2004-05) Season Ratings and Review

Nursing rating		Rating guide: excellent = 4 stars; good = 3 stars; fair = 2 stars, poor = 1 star
Artistic rating

Review and Synopsis (2004-05 season)

"ER" is a machine--or, at the least, a very well-adapted animal. The NBC drama's 11th season ended with the departure of John Carter, the last major character who had been with the show straight through from the start, and one who had been its moral center for years. But the fairly low-key way the show bid Carter farewell demonstrated its remarkable ability to regenerate itself with new characters, while keeping the same basic focus: the work and personal lives of about ten diverse physicians and one young white female nurse at a major urban ED.

Certainly, "ER" has lost some viewers in recent years, and this season was no exception. The success of the new hospital dramas "House" and "Grey's Anatomy" also suggested that the lion of network drama was finally approaching winter. Yet "ER" remained popular and profitable enough that there seemed to be no serious question about whether it would continue. And despite "House"'s superior wit, and the sense that "ER"'s best years are behind it, the show still has no competition when it comes to a serious, persuasive vision of many of the real challenges of modern clinical care. Of course, that lends distressing power to its depiction of nurses as skilled but peripheral subordinates to the physicians who ostensibly provide all important care.

The show's ongoing dramatic renewal is built on its focus on the training of new physicians as they move through medical school, internship and residency. Mentoring in a complex, life-and-death context is compelling, and every year there is a new crop of eager faces. (Of course, none of that applies to nurses, whose professional training the show has spent 11 years ignoring.) If the 11th season had a theme, it was the ED internships of Abby Lockhart, Neela Rasgotra, and newcomer Ray Barnett, who struggled to balance his all-grown-up day job with his passion for playing in a rock band. Rasgotra quickly bailed out of her prestigious internship at the University of Michigan, and what do you know, an internship position just happened to open up for her at County when another intern with obsessive-compulsive disorder resigned. Rasgotra also maintained a tentative long-distance romance with military physician Greg Gallant, who remained in Iraq but had not quite left the show, returning for a couple episodes near the end of the season. Lockhart now seems to occupy the "you set the tone" position held by John Carter and Mark Greene before her. On his way out, Carter actually delivered this "you set the tone" blessing, the same one Greene offered him before leaving, not to Lockhart but to the clearly inadequate new chief resident Archie Morris--a bit of "ER" irony. Lockhart had difficulty at times with her new status as a physician and (as she put it) "not a nurse," but she clearly gained confidence as the season went on. Romantically, she became involved with laconic medical student Jake.

Other physician characters also struggled with new professional and personal responsibilities. Resident Greg Pratt was clearly maturing, yet he refused to pursue the chief resident job, even though he was clearly a better choice than Morris. Susan Lewis did not seem to have such a hard time balancing work and a new baby as other "ER" characters have, perhaps because her baby father, flight nurse Chuck, was presented as being more maternal than she was--as evidenced in one episode by him using a supplemental feeding system while he breastfed their baby. But Lewis did have a hard time being taken seriously as chief of emergency medicine, and she ultimately failed in a bid to get "tenure." Carter had no such trouble--of course, it did not hurt that he pledged $150 million from his family foundation to build a new hospital wing. But his decision to name the wing after his stillborn son showed where his heart really was, and the season finale had him departing for Africa to be with the baby's mother Kem; he evidently will be back for a small number of future episodes. The show spent little time on Weaver, who may be on the way out. She did gain custody of the son she had with her deceased girlfriend, and she met her long lost birth mother (who disapproved of her sexual orientation). But mostly she just popped in to wield her chief of medicine power happily and harshly. Two characters who did seem to leave for good were Jing-Mei Chen, who quit the ED to care for and ultimately euthanize her failing father, and surgeon Elizabeth Corday, who quit and returned to England rather than accept a demotion from Weaver for performing a noble but illegal organ donation between two HIV-positive people.

Portrayal of Nursing (2004-05 season)

"ER" makes a more serious effort than any other prime time network show to present nurses as skilled, three-dimensional members of the health care team. The nurse characters at times display knowledge and skill, and they are not usually seen merely as casual romantic objects or clerks. One episode this year had nurse Sam Taggart caring and advocating for a rape victim with some autonomy; in another, she made a key diagnostic catch that had eluded an intern. Yet even these occasional efforts are undermined by the show's physician-centric vision of care. This includes the hopelessly lopsided nurse:physician major character ratio, the constant portrayal of physicians doing and getting credit for exciting, important work that nurses do in real life, the frequent suggestions that nurses are physician subordinates, the intense focus on physician training while nurses' professional development is ignored, the disproportionate emphasis on the one major nurse character's personal life, and the continued mishandling of slurs against nursing. Until these issues are addressed consistently--not just for 10 or 20 minutes out of every 16 hours of annual programming--the show's portrayal of nursing will remain fairly poor.

Several elements about the show's treatment of nursing impressed us this season. At times they were fairly subtle. It seemed to us that, more frequently than in the past, the show had nurse characters casually present care options to physicians with the sense of, "of course this is what we should do, don't you agree?" This is a realistic portrayal of the way care often works, and it's a big improvement over the prevailing Hollywood vision of nurses as assistants who wait for physicians to tell them what to do, an easy cliché into which even "ER," sadly, often lapses.

In one episode, Taggart makes a key catch that has eluded the harried intern Barnett. She surmises that a young gunshot victim who is about to go into surgery in fact has a bullet fragment in his knee, and then pushes to confirm it with an X-ray, despite Barnett's resistance. When Taggart is proved right, she receives credit from Barnett, senior resident Pratt, and even the boy's grateful mother. This was probably more the type of thing a physician would catch--perhaps due to the fact that one of the episode's writers is a physician and only physicians have serious expert input on "ER" scripts--but it's hard to argue with this display of a nurse's skill, patient advocacy, teaching of a young physician, and receipt of credit for a patient's outcome.

Perhaps the most remarkable episode of the year for nursing was one in which Taggart provided autonomous nursing care, teaching and advocacy to a critically injured rape victim. Acting at times like a real partner to attending Kovac, Taggart had several significant solo interactions with the patient, explaining aspects of her condition and what was being done to help. She even defibrillated the patient, an exciting ED nursing task that the show has almost never shown a nurse doing. And she displayed initiative and expertise in pursing an option to help the patient give police a description of her attacker, a serial rapist. Unfortunately, this was the episode's downfall for nursing: Taggart went ahead with the ostensibly risky procedure against Kovac's wishes, the patient could not give much of a description, and then she crashed and died, despite the staff's best efforts. The episode clearly suggested that Taggart's well-intentioned recklessness was the cause. Even worse, Kovac saved her from the consequences by bursting the tracheostomy balloon to deceive the coroner, suggesting not only that the nurse's judgment was not up to this kind of decision, but that she had to be rescued by her forgiving physician boyfriend. We suppose the show thinks that patient advocacy is best left to the physicians who can handle it.

And that brings us to the show's enduring nursing problems, which, sadly, dominated this season as they have every other. Because of the fact that all but one of the roughly 10 major characters are physicians, together with the Hollywood imperative to promote the major characters, there is no way the show could provide a realistic vision of the professional roles in a real level one trauma center, where the nurse:physician ratio is roughly 1:1. Physician nursing was rampant this season. Physician characters regularly did most or all of the triage, giving medications, histories and assessments, receiving patients from onrushing EMT's, defibrillation, psycho-social care of patients and families, education about care decisions and treatments, and discharge planning. Of course, real physicians also do some of these things, but the point is they do somewhere between some and none of each--not virtually all of each, as "ER" viewers are told. This shows once again that, contrary to what some in Hollywood believe, shows like "ER" do find nursing exciting and important. They just don't know that what they're showing actually is nursing, or perhaps simply find it more convenient to reinforcing the prevailing misimpressions.

Another continuing problem is the show's suggestions that physicians manage nurses. The show has almost never really shown nursing managers since the Hathaway era, and it frequently tells viewers that physicians direct all care and essentially manage nurses, even if they may have hired some unseen nurse administrator to handle the paperwork. (We understand that the show may, in its 12th season, do what the Center has been urging for years and introduce a real nurse manager, so stay tuned.) At least this year the show did not show a physician firing a nurse. But Lewis did once try to get Taggart to work overtime to fill in for what Lewis termed "my" mobile intensive care nurse, as if she managed such nurses. Weaver at one point told intern Lockhart that she had to "delegate" more to nurses and medical students, suggesting that nurses are just another class of sub-physician waiting to be assigned menial tasks. Barnett spent an episode purchasing more responsive work from nurses by giving them sweets, as if they were his dogs. Kovac once told Taggart, who felt ill, that she could leave work early, and if anyone had complaints they could talk to him, as if he were her ultimate manager. But the season's most powerful depiction of physician management did not involve a nurse, but social worker Wendall. This episode centered on the tragic results when Wendall failed to prevail upon the impatient Pratt to allow her to finish assessing an abused child. When the child later returned with fatal injuries, Wendall was devastated, and Pratt expressed reservations to Kovac about the "system" in which all physicians "trump" social workers. Kovac gently but authoritatively assured him that "[m]ost of the time it works." And Wendall blamed herself, not the "system." The result? A masterful endorsement of physicians' ostensible command of other health professions. And if physicians "trump" masters-prepared social workers, we need not wonder about nurses. Even physicians make mistakes, we're meant to understand, but really--who else could be trusted with such awesome power?

The 11th season maintained the focus on physicians' professional development that has been the vehicle for the show's renewal since Carter was a medical student. This year it was the internship of Lockhart, Rasgotra, and Barnett, and a number of episodes dealt in some depth with the trials and tribulations of their year. With the notable exception of Taggart's good catch of the bullet fragment that Barnett missed, the nurse characters played little role in this story, even though real nurses spend significant time educating new physicians. As for the professional development of nurses themselves, it's been many years--since the days of Carol Hathaway--since the show even suggested that nurses were anything but standardized, fungible workers who can be plugged into any situation. We never hear that someone is "one of our best nurses." It's been many years since we (briefly) saw an advanced practice nurse, and we cannot recall ever seeing a significant nursing student character. Nurses don't seem to have a job that requires much development, and if they show signs of wanting something more, that means they're going to flirt with medical school, as Hathaway and Lockhart did. Of course, not focusing on the professional development of a major character means there is more time to deal with her personal life, typically her romance with physicians, which the show has done with Hathaway, nurse Lockhart, and now Taggart. The show does not appear to know that 10% of nurses go to graduate nursing school.

The season also continued the show's tradition of allowing anti-nurse slurs to go unchallenged, though with Romano gone and Weaver largely absent, these were somewhat more subtle. At one point Lockhart complains that she was left to flail on a code with no other physicians, saying she had to "ask the nurses" for ideas, as if only a desperate physician would do that. Kovac assures her that the patient would have died regardless, and anyway, the nurses "respect that openness"--that is, they may not actually have any useful ideas, but it's good workplace relations to pretend they do. A major stroke patient wondering about her prognosis takes heart when she sees Taggart smiling, then thinks: "She's the nurse, maybe she doesn't know." We see little in the episode to contradict this incorrect view. The show seems intent on suggesting that nurses have a hard road because people don't respect them. But since it almost never has nurse characters respond with anything but hurt silence, many viewers will likely conclude the slurs are nasty but essentially accurate.

Finally, the season had a couple plotlines about Lockhart's transition from nurse to physician. We say that, even though we might normally note that a nurse does not stop being a nurse simply because she starts practicing as a physician, because the show took such great pains to emphasize that Lockhart was no longer a nurse. The first episode not only has Weaver telling Lockhart she has to learn to "delegate" to the nurses, as if she were still wasting time with that menial nurse stuff, but also has the intense code where Lockhart, the only physician, is reduced to actually asking the nurses for their ideas. In this scene, Haleh Adams answers Lockhart by noting what they are doing now; Taggart and Malik McGrath look at Lockhart blankly. Adams delivers the show's bottom line: "You're the doctor." In real life, good physicians do ask experienced ED nurses for their ideas in codes, and the nurses may actually have some. By the end of the season, Lockhart is responding indignantly to a patient's dismissive reference to her as a nurse, saying: "I am not a nurse. I'm a doctor."

Reviewed by Harry Jacobs Summers
Nursing Editor: Sandy Summers, MSN, MPH, RN
Last updated: September 22, 2005

This is the 2004-2005 season 11 review. Also see archives of our "ER" season reviews for:

2005-2006 "ER" season 12

2003-2004 "ER" season 10

2002-2003 "ER" season 9

The views expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of the Board Members or Advisory Panel of The Center for Nursing Advocacy.

Write a letter to "ER!" See our "ER" action page and see our episode-by-episode reviews.

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