One day last June, Susan Brillhart received a phone call from an ABC-TV casting director with an unusual request: Would she be available to appear in an episode of the daytime drama, All My Children?
Brillhart is a veteran pediatric nurse practitioner and an assistant professor of nursing at BMCC; she had never acted a day in her life. But the call made absolute sense. “A former nursing student of mine was working as a paramedic and also playing one on the show,” she recalls. “There was an upcoming part for a nurse, but the producers felt a real nurse would do a more credible job than an actor. So he referred them to me.” And so Brillhart wound up treating Ryan Lavery, the character played by Cameron Mathison, for a superficial gunshot wound. “It was a great fun,” she says. “Even better was being side by side with Michael as we carried Ryan into the emergency room on a stretcher.”
Continuing role
As it turned out, Brillhart’s acting debut was also her finale. But she continued to work behind the scenes for All My Children as a technical consultant with expertise in pediatric issues. And that experience, she says, has been even more satisfying.
“Two story lines involved the birth of a 24-week ‘preemie’ and a 14-month infant who’d been in a car accident,” she says. “My job was to actually script lines for the physicians and nurses, as well as review what their writers had produced.” In one script submitted for her vetting, a hospital nurse decreed that the young accident victim would have to forego his baby blanket while he was in the ICU. Brillhart nixed the line. “A baby blanket is exactly what a 14-month-old needs—especially when he’s under severe stress. Any medical professional would know this.” The line was deleted.
Expert guidance
In addition to serving as a technical consultant to All My Children, Brillhart drafted acting and production guidelines covering “everything from technical issues to how medical staff should dress and wear their hair.” Performing on screen was fun, Brillhart says, but it was the opportunity to educate that she found most rewarding. “First and foremost, that’s what I am – an educator,” she says. “Whether I’m educating parents, my students, or the cast and writers of a TV show, it’s through my role as an educator that I can achieve the best outcomes.”
Not surprisingly, Brillhart finds her teaching experience at BMCC especially satisfying. “A good 50 percent of my students have already earned bachelors degrees, so that they are essentially wonderfully bright, accomplished graduate students,” she says. “But since they’re new to nursing, I don’t have to undo any bad habits. I have the best of both worlds – and I’m the envy of my peers at senior colleges.”
