Opinion: You're not in Guatemala now, Minister Little

Shortland Street and money, Health Minister Andrew Little's remedy for health-worker shortage. Photo / Mark Mitchell

OPINION

"Is it you or is it me? Lately, I've been lost it seems. I think a change is what I need."

Hmmmm, have you thought about nursing?

If those lines sound familiar, that's because they're the opening lyrics of the Shortland Street theme song.

It's been so long since I've watched Shortland Street that I don't even know if they still use the version with the lyrics or whether it's more of an instrumental these days.

Either way, Health Minister Andrew Little and the Government have announced that they're going to use the show to promote nursing as a career.

I can see it now - the end-of-season cliffhanger: will they pass their exams? Will they be rostered on for New Years' Eve or will they have the night off to go to Queenstown? Dramatic stuff.

Funny thing is, apparently, the storyline that's running at the moment on the show is about how stressed, miserable and stretched nurses are. Which is probably doing a pretty good job of turning people off nursing.

So it's going to be quite a pivot from making nursing look like the last job you'd want to do, to something people will be falling over themselves to take up.

The nurses union - the Nurses Organisation - isn't too impressed by the idea. Which is putting it mildly.

Its president Anne Daniels is saying that when Andrew Little announced it yesterday her phone started pinging with messages from nurses saying "is this guy for real?".

Well, he is for real - but so too is the desperate need for nurses in this country.

Remember it was only about a week ago when Dunedin Hospital was so short over a weekend that it brought in a bunch of trainee nurses to keep things going on the wards and paid them with shopping vouchers.

One of them got in a bit of strife for making a TikTok video while they were on shift and that, right there, is one of the reasons why the Government's Shortland Street idea is so off beam.

Because if it thinks Shortland Street is the way to get cut-through - it's dreaming and shows that it's stuck in the 90s.

I reckon one TikTok video from a trainee nurse could have far more influence over someone deciding to give nursing a go than a storyline on a TV show that's been around forever.

Our teenagers don't watch Shortland Street. So Andrew Little's not going to get our lot signing up to be nurses.

And I can't say whether watching WKRP in Cincinnati when I was a kid had any influence over what I do for a living. Probably not. It was just entertainment.

Just like Suits has never made me want to be a lawyer and Police 10/7 - or whatever it's called these days - has never made me want to be a cop. And I don't think I've ever watched Border Patrol and thought "that's the game for me".

This is why I think the Government might be expecting a bit too much to come from this Shortland Street thing.

Some people have been saying it's offensive to nurses and embarrassing to their profession. I don't think the TV show idea on its own is offensive to nurses. But it will be offensive if nurses watch it and think people are being lied to about what it's really like being a nurse. It will also be offensive if the Government doesn't back it up with some genuine investment in the nursing profession.

I could be totally wrong about the Government going up a dead-end street with this TV show thing and, who knows, there could be a truckload of people who see it and want to become a nurse.

But it will all be meaningless and amount to zero, if nothing changes for the nurses themselves and if they still feel under-appreciated, under-valued and taken for granted by the Government and the health system.

And that is where things will get offensive.