Comedian, nurse and health care advocate Blake Lynch, known as Nurse Blake, brings his “Shock Advised Comedy Tour” to North Charleston Performing Arts Center on Dec. 6 with the aim of uplifting and entertaining fellow health care professionals. Lynch is a popular presence on the touring circuit, taking this show to more than 100 cities.
Lynch said part of the Shock Advised show’s massive appeal is that he is purposely preaching to the choir, as he brilliantly blends skits, videos and interactive stories taken from real-life experiences working as a nurse in a trauma center.
“The audience is always about 70% nurses, 20% other health care workers and 10% people who just think nurses are hot,” Lynch playfully estimated.
Seeing “generations of health care professionals arriving together” and witnessing “party buses of nurses” coming out to have a good time is what makes it all worthwhile, he said.
Combining advocacy and comedy
Lynch grew up in Orlando and studied nursing at the University of Central Florida when his work as an activist began, he told the Charleston City Paper.
“When I was in nursing school, I went to go donate blood, but I was banned for being gay,” he said. “I started a little Facebook group called ‘Banned4Life,’ and we successfully pressured the FDA [Food and Drug Administration] to end the lifetime ban on gay males donating blood.”
When he started working full time as a nurse, Lynch realized his role in health care also provided a wealth of comedic material. “Just in the span of 12 hours, nurses experience so much,” Lynch said. “There’s 100 stories you could get just from one shift.”
Drawing inspiration from his favorite funny person Joan Rivers, he began to cultivate his own comedic timing, energy and approach to storytelling within a very specific niche.
Not long after he started posting on social media, his videos connected with nursing students and health care workers around the globe and went viral. The stage name and persona “Nurse Blake” was born, and now, Lynch currently entertains more than four million followers daily on social media.
Creating the tour
Not content to perform only at comedy clubs, Lynch expanded his vision for comedic performances to include larger-scale gatherings, including NurseCon at Sea. “That’s my nursing conference on a cruise line, where we take over a whole ship and fill it with 3,500 nurses and do nursing education, meet ups and parties,” he said.
These sessions have been insightful for Lynch as well as the other attendees. According to him, the takeaway is that “no matter where you work or live or how old you are or how long you’ve been in nursing, we can all laugh at and relate to pretty much the same things.”
Lynch will perform in the Lowcountry this week, with the aim of bringing laughter and camaraderie to Charleston’s health care professionals. After this current national run of shows is over, he said he will continue to dream big.
“Growing the nursing conference world is a priority, and I’m actually going to be launching NurseCon Orlando soon, which will be our first land-based event where we expect a few thousand nurses to come out to take over Universal with us.”
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