Nurse with Good Intentions

They're really trying their best to help a friend get over their illness, but let's face it. They suck at it. It's another character's job to explain this without hurting them and assure them they appreciate the effort.

More dramatic moments might have the "nurse" reveal they have deeper emotional reasons for insisting on taking care of someone.

If the illness is relatively minor, such as a cold, the nurse in this trope may also be a Lethal Chef attempting to invoke Through His Stomach.

Contrast with Annoying Patient.

Examples of Nurse with Good Intentions include:

Anime and Manga

• Sailor Moon: Minako tends to the sick Rei and ends up causing all the discomforts and annoyances herself. Considered a major turning point to her Cast Speciation.
  • Though at the end of the show, Minako gets sick and Usagi and Chibi-Usa show up trying to offer their own "help".
• Pokémon with bumbling, literal nursing pokemon (Chansey and its evolution Blissey).
  • Actually, the Chanseys aren't that bumbling; it's more of a case by case situation, with some being very efficient and others very inept. OTOH, there was an episode with a very clumsy Blissey who was an old friend of Jessie...
• Hayate the Combat Butler: Nagi attempts to help Hayate recover from his sickness; this version also shows her Lethal Chef side.
• Kamen no Maid Guy: Fubuki gets sick and Naeka tries nursing her back to health, displaying her Lethal Chef credentials in the process.
• Nenji of Nanaka 6/17 gets two of these in the episode where he catches a cold. Nanaka and Kuriko both vie for the right to take care of him, and both fail miserably.
• Franken Fran is a genius doctor and really just wants to help; the only problem is that while she's almost certain to fix you, 99% of the time you'll really, REALLY wish she hadn't.
• In Good Luck! Ninomiya-kun, Mayu nurses Shungo in an episode but makes things infinitely worse by only stimulating THAT part of the body.

Film

• The Man With a Plan in Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead declares that the woman he hired to look after him is a terrible nurse - but he "knows he gets an erection every time he sees her", which makes up for it.

Literature

• Kyouran Kazoku Nikki: Ouka gets sick and all hell breaks lose as Kyoka nurses him from a cold to a brain infection to breaking his right arm and leg.
• In The Story of the Treasure Seekers by E. Nesbit, the kids decided they want to invent medicine. So they try goofing around in the cold until one of them gets sick. Eventually, one of them does and they try to give him all sorts of medicines... but none work and he just gets worse. Needless to say, the adult who discovers this mess is not amused.
• In Harry Potter, Gilderoy Lockhart insists on trying to heal Harry's broken arm himself rather than take Harry to the hospital wing, because he likes to show off. He ends up accidentally removing all the bones in Harry's arm.

Live-Action TV

• In an episode of House, several babies in PPTH are struck by a mystery disease. House eventually discovers that an elderly nurse working in the pediatric ward had a cold, which she transmitted to a teddy bear which was then given to a newborn.
• In Desperate Housewives, Mike is in a coma. Susan comes in every day to visit him and help the nurses with his care. She refuses to let the nurses shave him, preferring to do it himself. Cue Mike with bandages all over his face.
• In Parks and Recreation, Ann Perkins is actually a good nurse, but her instinctive urge to take care of injured or helpless people leads her to support her lovable slacker ex-boyfriend Andy for far longer than she should.
• Isobel Crawley, of Downton Abbey, is actually a pretty good, professionally-trained nurse... but her attempts to help out in the hospital are more suited to the skills of a doctor, which she isn't.

Video Games

• Compa from Neptunia isn't very good of a nurse, as she's still in training. She nearly ends up choking Nep-Nep to death trying to bandage her up.

Web Comics

• In Nip and Tuck, here Tuck makes an escape from just such a would-be Florence Nightingale..

Western Animation

• The Ren and Stimpy Show: "Nurse Stimpy" has Stimpy bungling his way through an attempt to look after a sick Ren.
• I Am Weasel: Loulabelle - Weasel's assistant, whom usually dresses as a nurse. Her debut was in the season 2 episode, "I.R. Mommy".
• In one episode of the 1987 version of DuckTales, Scrooge is sick, and Webby wants to be his nurse. She starts with bringing him something to drink - stumbles, and splashes it all over him.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, "A Bird in the Hoof": Fluttershy takes on this role when she makes off with Princess Celestia's sickly pet bird, Philomena, who turns out to be unresponsive to a variety of treatments. Twilight Sparkle gets in on the act, out of fear of what will happen to Fluttershy if Celestia finds out, and Hilarity Ensues. Turns out Philomena's a phoenix, and her "sickness" was from being at the end of her life cycle, just before the "spontaneously combust and rise from the ashes" part.