Bringing Nursing Back

Has anyone seen the 5-minute video, “We’re Bringing Nursing Back,” on YouTube? Made by nursing students at Binghamton (NY) University, it is intended as a recruiting video and has been viewed in excess of 180,000 times since it first appeared online in late 2006.

There has been some criticism (by those long out of nursing school) about the students’ minimizing, in the opening scene of the video, the importance of Florence Nightingale and the ideals of nursing she espoused. It is obvious that the young woman portraying a professor was trying very hard to make her Nurse Nightingale lecture as dry as dust. I can live with a little tongue in cheek humor but, in my opinion, the entire opening should’ve been left on the cutting room floor. Jumping right into the message of the nursing shortage, steady employment, good salary and working three days per week (gotta love those 12-hour shifts) would’ve been more effective. Besides, I have a theatre background and there was a serious lack of enunciation and projection in the intro that I found annoying.

The students’ decision to dance and rap “We’re Bringing Nursing Back” as a take-off on Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack” also didn’t go over very well in some quarters. Something about linking a video that promotes nursing to a song about dirty sex raised some eyebrows. Not that I’d have a clue. Sure, I know who Justin Timberlake is but I don’t know anything about his music. When I watched the video, nothing salacious came to mind. I saw energetic young people as enthusiastic cheerleaders for a profession they appear to value and enjoy. Whether their performance will win converts to nursing, I don’t know. Their message is aimed at a demographic decades younger than I am, and I can see there would be some appeal for that set.

The Binghamton students get an A for effort and cleverness.

Watch the "We're Bringing Nursing Back" video on YouTube