Cable channel, MTV, is set to launch the so-called “reality-tv” show Scrubbing In this Thursday Oct. 24 on MTV. The show focuses on ten travel nurses who are on temporary assignment in Orange County, California. 

The trailer alone has sparked rising opposition to the 10-part-series most notably in the form of a petition on change.org, and raises serious concerns among the leadership of CNA/NNU with the portrayal of the nursing profession.

The petition, addressed to MTV executives, calls for cancellation of the premiere stating, “We feel that this obvious dramatization is a gross misrepresentation of the nursing profession. Not only are we tired of the negative stigma that surrounds our profession but also of the senseless sexual objectification that we as nurses, both male and female, continue to endure.”

The series was filmed in Santa Ana at Coastal Communities Hospital (a California Nurses Association/National Nurses United represented facility) and Western Medical Center (a nonunion facility).  

Prior to production, CNA/NNU RNs  at Coastal  refused to sign waivers to be filmed because they were worried the show would trivialize and distort the realities of hospital nursing. According to a labor representative at the hospital, MTV producers told the RNs that the cable channel was changing its brand image. This program, they claimed, would kick off the transition to a kinder, gentler, less exploitative MTV.

From the looks of the series trailer and MTV’s Facebook page, that is not true. 

We have no doubt, considering typical MTV shows, that the series will be problematic on a number of counts.  Earlier this month, we spoke to Sandy Summers, co-founder of Truth About Nursing, an organization that strives to expand public understanding of the nursing profession by working with the media to improve portrayals of nursing.

Summers stressed the importance of seeing an entire episode before organizing a response. Both CNA/NNU and Summers contacted MTV, as well as the production company responsible for the series, to request a preview copy.

We’re not surprised they refused our request. Sensationalism is MTV’s bread and butter – in fact the network has only canceled one series in the past decade. So this Thursday, we will watch the first episode and pay close attention to the advertisers supporting the show.

Stay tuned for our response in the coming days. 

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RELATED NEWS:

Since this post, we learned that TV critic Rob Owen has a community blog post on the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website reviewing the first episode of MTV’s Scrubbing In, which we were denied access to.

By Karen Higgins, RN, NNU Co-president

With the current lunacy over keeping the lights on in the federal government and the debt ceiling in abeyance, until (fittingly, as one columnist has noted) right before next Groundhog Day, it’s time to step up attention to the next home invasion.

With the hostage taking of the current crisis has passed, a budget conference committee will be convened whose charge will be further deep cuts beyond the much detested sequester cuts negotiated late last year. And, there’s already “bipartisan” consensus that a central target of those knives will be two of the most important social reforms in U.S. history, Social Security and Medicare.

Look out below, Congress and the White House are preparing to throw Grandma off the cliff.

Perhaps you might detect a trend here. Rather than take on Wall Street and the 1 percent, also known as their funding base and their peers – those very people who are responsible for the most vast income inequality in a century and the current, lingering economic crisis facing Main Street communities across America – the White House and Congress are going after Grandma and Grandpa.

We’ve seen the outline of the goals advanced, and they are not pretty.

For Medicare proposals include raising the eligibility age to 67, “means testing” and other higher out of pocket costs for those with middle to upper incomes to pay more for care. Similar slashes are envisioned for Social Security, adopting the so-called “chained” CPI – a reconfiguration of how cost of living increases are determined to reduce benefits, http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-mh-chained-20131004,0,4565719.story

cutting benefits for middle and upper income seniors, and raising the eligibility age to qualify for Social Security to 68 or higher.

The other not so bright idea, pushed by Wall Street, is to lower the corporate tax rate, already at a historically low rate and avoided altogether by some of the wealthiest corporations in the U.S.

The only thing worse than these proposals is the willingness of too many of the compromisers in the White House and Congress to jump on board. http://www.salon.com/2013/10/10/looming_victory_for_gop_social_security_cuts/

A stellar list of progressive legislators and some constituency groups are actively fighting it, with good reason.   http://www.politico.com/story/2013/10/government-shutdown-democrats-entitlements-97797.html#ixzz2gg3CWbh5

On Medicare, means testing would fundamentally transform the program into one whose primarily beneficiaries are the poor and the least healthy, making it even more politically vulnerable for additional cuts by those politicians who have repeatedly demonstrated their complete lack of sympathy for the poor and most vulnerable. It would also undermine the concept of the risk pool which works by including the more healthy who need fewer health services with the less healthy who require more care, meaning total Medicare costs would actually increase.

Nurses in particular live by the ethos that no one should be denied care, or be penalized in access to care based on their income. As nurses we already see people of many incomes struggling to get the healthcare they need in a persistent recession and the decades long widening of income disparity.

Social Security too should be off the chopping block. Among other reasons, Social Security contributes nothing to the deficit, its Trust Fund has a huge surplus and is fully funded through 2033 and can easily be strengthened for an even longer term by raising the income ceiling on payroll taxes above the current limit of $110,000.

Cuts to either Social Security or Medicare could not come at a worse time when seniors have been steadily losing ground to the economic disparities so rampant in our economic system today.

With the gaps in Medicare only paying about 60 percent of average medical costs for seniors today, the real poverty rate for seniors is at least 15 percent even with these signature programs, the Kaiser Family Foundation reported earlier this year. Senior Security and Medicare both need to be strengthened and benefits expanded, not cut. http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/05/20/senior-poverty-is-much-worse-than-you-think/

Medicare and Social Security retain their enormous, broad popularity precisely because they are broad based, available to everyone without differentiation in services – even among those in the Tea Party and others who say they hate government (except when they need it).

Instead of implementing any cuts to programs so essential to a civil society, we ought to be expanding the economic pie. The best way, as nurses have said for some time, is by taxing those who created the current crisis with the Robin Hood tax on financial speculation http://robinhoodtax.org/ as embodied in HR 1579. That would mean helping Grandma and her children and grandchildren, not pushing her off the cliff.

Karen Higgins is a registered nurse and co-president of National Nurses United.