Raymond, A. (2018). Influence of perceptions and stereotypes of the nursing role on career choice in secondary students: A regional perspective. Nurse Education Today, 62(8), 150-157. Retrieved March 11, 2018.

From Digital Culture & Society

Megan Johnson

What this study has aimed to do was to decipher whether or not there is a correlation between heavy consumption of medical television dramas and a false perception of the real-world perceptions of health professionals. Medical dramas have been increasingly popular since the early 2000’s. There are many different medical television dramas currently circulating the media. Currently, there are many individuals choosing to go into professions solely based on what they view in a television series or the media. Many of these popular dramas are now available to view on the ever-so-popular Netflix. This television-viewing platform allows individuals to watch these programs whenever they would like, allowing a heavy consumption in a short amount of time, which may alter their perception more, of reality. Cultivation theory is a popular theory to evaluate the way mass media messages create a symbolic thought and a perception in an individual’s mind, which may be completely different from the world and what it really is. This article heavily examines the correlation between the two. It sets out to understand the relationship between heavy medical drama consumption and viewer perceptions and belief related to the health field. What the findings suggest of this article is that heavy viewers of these programs tend to under estimate and undermine chronic illnesses and the importance of nursing professionals in this matter. This can also pose a larger issue in the grand scheme of things as a certain stereotype has surrounding the nursing profession from these programs. Nurses are constantly seen as inferior to physicians, predominately female, and unintelligent. This could be seen as an issue as individuals looking to go into the health profession may cut the option of nursing from their mind due to what they view on these programs.

71 Australian high-school students were apart of a semi-structured questionnaire that were analyzed using a descriptive content analysis. The students were asked multiple questions regarding their perceptions of the nursing career, and whether or not it would be something they were interested in pursuing. They were asked if they believe that the career would mirror what they saw on medical television programs. This article had its positives and negatives. I believe that their sample age group was ideal for this study. I think this was a fabulous demographic as this age tends to be the age that consumes the most television dramas and are trying to figure out what they want to do with their future career. I believe the size was also ideal as it was a rural Australian community. With that being said, I believe if they were to spread their study out to more larger Australian communities such as Brisbane or Sydney, they would have received different opinions which may have given more insight on this phenomena. This article could have also benefit by going more in-depth on cultivation theory, as it is quite literally what they are studying. Since their study as secluded to such a rural area, it may have been beneficial to show these students some episodes of popular medical dramas for those who haven’t seen them, to give them an insight on how nurses are portrayed. It may have been helpful to disseminate what students come from a family in the medical profession, as they may bring a particular bias to this study.

The author tried to decipher a theory that has been done many times over – in simpler terms, does the consumption of heavy medical dramas cultivate a certain perception of that profession? As this study has been done countless times, I believe they could have benefit from more innovative ideas and a larger sample size from a larger demographic. Their main finding was that heavy medical drama consumption does cultivate a certain perception on the health-care profession field – specifically nurses. What they also discovered was that targeted recruitment of the nursing profession has a positive impact on those individuals who are interested in a profession in the field of health care. Though this study has been done over and over, I believe this particular one gave an interesting insight to perceptions of nursing. I really enjoyed how they took into consideration students perceptions following a recruitment presentation – shows high-school minds aren’t fully persuaded by the media! – Yet.