The nursing profession needs to become more pro-active in changing the negative image in which nurses are portrayed on YouTube, the famous video-sharing website. A study published in the August edition of the Journal of Advanced Nursing reveals that many of the top ‘hits’ on searches for ‘nurses’ on YouTube portray these professionals in a derogative way.

Researchers conducted a search on YouTube to find the most viewed videos for “nurses” and “nursing”. They included 96 videos in their study. A preliminary analysis of the first 50 hits for each word revealed that the top ten hits had been viewed between 61,695 and 901,439 times. The team analyzed the top ten hits more comprehensively.

Co-author, Dr Gerard Fealy, from the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Systems at Dublin’s University College in Ireland comments: “Our study found that nurses were depicted in three main ways – as a skilled knower and doer, a sexual plaything and a witless incompetent.”

The researchers found that the top ten most viewed videos consisted of various media, including advertising, promotional videos, and excerpts from a TV comedy clip and a cartoon and that some texts caricatured, dramatized and parodied nurse-patient and inter-professional encounters. Four of the ten analyzed clips featured nurses as educated, technically skilled and smart individuals, which were all posted by nurses. The videos included interviews with nurses, dancing and a rap song, all promoting the nursing profession as a rewarding and valuable career, in which nurses were featured using their skills and knowledge in professional environments, such as a busy clinical hospital.

The team noted that nurses were often portrayed as sexual objects in provocative clothing as objects of male sexual fantasies that are willing to accommodate their dreams and advances as shown in video clips from the American sitcom Frasier, a lingerie advertisement, a Virgin Mobile commercial set in a hospital, and a soft news item on an internet TV show.

The final two of the top ten hits featured a cartoon of a nurse in an Alzheimer’s unit who was portrayed as being stupid and incompetent and an American sitcom that stereotyped the nurse as a dumb blonde, who voiced arrogant and ignorant opinions about patients, behaving in an unprofessional and callous way.

Dr. Fealy comments:

“The nurse and nursing stereotypes on YouTube are very similar to those reported in studies on television shows, which seem to appeal to a particular public need for medical melodramas and provide TV stations with valuable advertising revenue. The same revenue-generating possibilities exist on the internet and it is hardly surprising that its commercial potential should bring with it the continued portrayal of nursing stereotypes.”

He continues saying: “Despite being hailed as a medium of the people, our study showed that YouTube is no different to other mass media in the way that it propagates gender-bound, negative and demeaning nursing stereotypes. Such stereotypes can influence how people see nurses and behave towards them.”

Fealy concludes: “We feel that the professional bodies that regulate and represent nurses need to lobby legislators to protect the profession from undue negative stereotyping and support nurses who are keen to use YouTube to promote their profession in a positive light.”

Written by Petra Rattue