Effecting minds of the people-Subliminal effect of Media

I can see that some media probably affects how people think about and act toward nursing, like maybe a respected newspaper or current affairs show on TV. But how can some TV drama, sitcom or commercial affect people that way? People know enough not to take that stuff seriously!
A Actually, the effect of that stuff on the audience's views and actions is taken very seriously indeed by the public health community, physicians, the news and advertising industries--and even Hollywood itself. In the field of public health, the growing efforts to influence the public's health-related views and actions through entertainment media are called "entertainment education."
The mass media is in the business of affecting how and what people think. To believe that people are able to disregard everything they perceive in the entertainment media because the scenarios presented aren't literally "true," or because they are loosely staged simulations of reality (as in "reality" shows), we would also have to believe that people disregard all messages in advertising, since ads commonly present actors and models in simulated situations. But that is simply not how the human mind works. In order for an entertainment show or commercial to be effective, the audience must identify in some way with the characters and what they are doing, even if some aspects of the situation are "unrealistic."