Showtime’s newest show, Nurse Jackie, chronicles the day-to-day life of the heroine, Nurse Jackie. Behind the scenes, however, is Zoey Barkow, a first-year nursing student and nursing assistant to Nurse Jackie. Zoey is a rare example of the nursing assistant’s role in a modern hospital.
Halfway through the first episode, Jackie and Zoey carry a battered prostitute, covered in bloody cuts, holding the severed ear of the customer responsible for her injuries. While it’s completely unbelievable to think that a nurse and nursing student would be the only people caring for a patient with such extensive trauma, Jackie’s faith in Zoey on her first day on the job is even more ridiculous.
During the altercation, the prostitute managed to cut off her assailant’s ear. Jackie confidently gives Zoey her ear to take care of her. A nursing assistant on her first assignment would not be trusted with a body part of hers, as evidenced by Zoey’s immediate reaction: throwing up on the floor.
In the eighth episode, “Pupils”, Zoey tells Jackie about a show she watched about eyeballs, and Jackie chides her for not paying enough attention to them during checkups. Zoey’s carelessness in the area causes her to dole out medicine to patients with no real problems. As Jackie says, “You like the students so much that you just make sure to check them out.”
Would a nurse’s aide deliver medication to Dave the addict? No. Hospitals have mechanisms and employees that prevent dangers like these from occurring. This is shown again in the eleventh episode when Zoey accidentally overdoses a patient on painkillers, causing her to go into a coma. A nursing assistant would never be allowed to administer so many medications to a patient without supervision.
One of the truest interactions between Zoey and her co-workers is her relationship with Dr. Eleanor O’Hara. In the third episode, Zoey parades her new stethoscope, which O’Hara quickly grabs during one of her procedures. While it’s unlikely that Zoey would have been running IVs like she claims she was when her stethoscope was discovered missing, the power play between the two is true to her style.
Jackie tells Zoey about the doctors’ rudeness and their way of taking things. Things like “sandwiches. Stethoscopes. Credit”, urging her to assert herself before Dr. O’Hara to claim ownership of her. However, her Zoey can’t work up the courage to ask for it, and Dr. O’Hara tells Jackie over lunch that she knows she took the stethoscope, but that she has enjoyed watching Zoey obsess over it.
Many first-year nursing students suffer from the same fears as Zoey. She is of a different race than her co-workers, she wears panda earrings and patterned scrubs. She is young. It is entirely logical that a newcomer to the field would fear someone with much more experience. This would be one of the main causes of the disparity in power between a nursing assistant and an emergency doctor.