| rdfs:comment | - Nurses, like doctors, are usually good in fiction. After all, a person who works to save lives can't possibly be evil, right? Not in the case of the Battleaxe Nurse. The Battleaxe Nurse is an incredibly sadistic and cruel nurse, often older (and uglier) than her more angelic counterpart, and Always Female. She gets her kicks from kicking patients, the weaker the better. If she isn't already the head nurse, her cruelty gives her a degree of power over both the patients and the other nurses. Anybody who goes against her ends up injured or worse, and she jumps at the chance to give a particularly rebellious patient a lobotomy. Sometimes the Battleaxe Nurse has a hint of the Mad Doctor in her, especially if she decides to test interesting new drugs on her helpless patients.
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| abstract | - Nurses, like doctors, are usually good in fiction. After all, a person who works to save lives can't possibly be evil, right? Not in the case of the Battleaxe Nurse. The Battleaxe Nurse is an incredibly sadistic and cruel nurse, often older (and uglier) than her more angelic counterpart, and Always Female. She gets her kicks from kicking patients, the weaker the better. If she isn't already the head nurse, her cruelty gives her a degree of power over both the patients and the other nurses. Anybody who goes against her ends up injured or worse, and she jumps at the chance to give a particularly rebellious patient a lobotomy. Sometimes the Battleaxe Nurse has a hint of the Mad Doctor in her, especially if she decides to test interesting new drugs on her helpless patients. The most famous example of this trope, if not the Trope Maker, is Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. There's also a milder version more common in comedy. This version is still hugely unsympathetic and enjoys having power over the patients and other nurses, but can still say with some justification that everything she's doing is for the patients' own good (although the patients are unlikely to see it like that). In British works, she almost certainly has the title Matron and is played by Hattie Jacques (who actually was a Red Cross nurse during W.W.II). A subtrope is the Triage Tyrant. Examples of Battleaxe Nurse include:
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