From books to movies: here's why the perception of nurses can and must change.

Does clothing make the man? The old adage that the image a person, a professional, presents of themselves can be deemed irrelevant compared to the content they express, leaves one perplexed when one delves deeper from the surface. The decorum and professional image that the nursing profession still struggles to achieve, both within the professional enclave and externally, demonstrates this, and is confirmed by the blurred perception that society reveals of it.

“I've never received so many messages, a couple a week at most, someone passing through Milan or Cristina, a plump girl from Martina who's studying to become a nurse in Milan and with whom I've gone to Thursday night parties a couple of times.” “Why do you study to learn how to give an injection?” “Much more than to stay the same” (“It's Forbidden to Love” by Mario Desiati) . Despite the profound confusion in society's imagination regarding the role, skills, and educational path that nursing professions undertake, writers all seem to have very clear ideas on the subject. The fact is that the term nurse in the story includes everyone who isn't elected to the rank of doctor. Everyone, absolutely everyone. It would then seem almost necessary for many writers to describe a certain corporeality for nurses, implying the indispensable requirement of physicality to perform a “job” that requires powerful arms and sometimes some cognitive ability.

"Nurse Maria, however, looked exactly like Nurse Maria. Fat and maternal, cheerful and chatty, she shuffled around in rubber clogs and, by always speaking too loudly, immediately made that horrible situation seem normal" (Maurizio De Giovanni's "Gli occhi di Sara") . If imagery overwhelms image, the problem becomes even more significant and generates confusion and misunderstanding, contributing in some way to making the nursing profession even more unattractive. From American television and literary scenes, the figure of the paramedic emerges, further confusing everything (neither a doctor nor a nurse, but a technical figure), and for Italian translators, choosing the right terminology has never been a difficult task, given the widespread use of the word "paramedics."

But the media's portrayal of nurses, and especially of women nurses, doesn't depend solely on paper. Film and television have drawn heavily from the healthcare world to portray—positively or negatively—a series of historical figures. Their personalities, at times, are so powerful that they almost make people forget their profession.

Co-starring with the immense Jack Nicholson in the celebrated One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Nurse Mildred Ratched was a figure who embodies the concept of rigid and dehumanizing authority. This character recently took on a life of her own thanks to the Netflix TV series, aptly titled Ratched, which tells the story of Mildred, a nurse who arrives in Northern California in 1947 hoping to work at a prestigious psychiatric hospital where new (and disturbing) experiments on the human mind are being conducted.