Birthday time again, and this time, for Cosette. The sweetest, most beautiful, most perfect little fluff on Earth.

It’s nice that there is a new TV show out with a nurse in the lead role, but why oh why do they have to pull same old, worn out and tire, dog and pony show? The average medical show (ER, House), has doctors performing deeds that are completely alien to real life. And now, here comes Hawthorne in their footsteps.

Please, a Cheif Nursing Officer (CNO) who steps in and does patient care? A CNO who even leaves her office? A CNO is an administrator, not a clinician. An executive who does not mingle with patients or staff, but instead, attends meetings and does paperwork. Maybe the CNO might put on a pair of scrubs if she worked in a 20 bed rural hospital, but not in a large urban facility. That the CNO is “fighting” for her nurses against the evil establishment is ridiculous, because she is the establishment. Or that she even knows who the nurses are working at the hospital. Even her strutting around in a white coat is ludicrous—CNOs are executives. They wear business suits, no white coats.

Plus, how difficult is it to come up with a script that doesn’t look like it was written by Mickey Mouse. Would a nurse in 2009 really give a med that he/she knew to be detrimental? No, of course not. If the doctor remained firm, the nurse would take it up with the nurse manager of the unit or supervisor, and hold the dose.

And of course, the primary problem that Hawthorne has to contend with is physicians being mean to nurses. Cruelty to nurses, the ongoing war between the money-hungry and callous MD and the saintly self-sacrificing RN. Yawn….

The show is just a jumble of the worn out and worst of Hollywood cliches of the hospital environment, only now we have nurse Hawthorne instead of Marcus Welby. We have the disgruntled male nurse who would rather be a physician, the newbie who cries because a doctor yells at her (and Hawthorne of course is by her side to wipe the tears), the sexy bimbo nurse (didn’t they disappear circa 1950?), the mean incompetent physicians (all of them on the show), nurses who speak in baby talk and giggle over the cute paramedic…need I do on?

Why not do something innovative, like have the main character as an “ordinary” nurse who is fighting for better working conditions, trying to get the nursing staff to unionize, showing how the hospital deals with uninsured, etc. Or even make her the manager of a single unit, where she would realistically be involved with nurses and could have easier contact with patients.

But no, in all their wisdom, Hollywood chose to give us…it’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s SUPERNURSE! Making her Chief Nursing Officer means that Ms. Hawthorne can now be responsible for saving the entire hospital, as she appears to be the only one who is competent. And who is always right, and never loses her saintly affect.

Hawthorne’s CNO can do everything and anything, from rushing into the NICU to start an IV, because as we know, the regular nurses working there are just too dumb to perform such a “complicated” procedure, to having time for heart to heart talks with patients and even kissing one on the cheek, to making rounds on the hospital units, sitting in on report…and yet, somehow having time to do her job as CNO.

Here’s a hint for the uninitiated. In a large hospital, most if not all nurses have no idea who the CNO is. They wouldn’t know her by sight, name, and probably don’t even know she exists. Ditto for most doctors. The CNO generally got there because she sticks by rules, doesn’t make waves, and is firmly committed to the status quo. She’s not the renegade who’s out there fighting for truth, justice, and revolution.

I hope this silly show dies a quiet death, before making nurses look even more ridiculous. Or before spreading even more myths and legends about life in the hospital.

Very good review from St. Murse, which outlines the glaring idiocy of this new show.