Nurse Influencers: The Digital Performance of Care, Professional Identity, and the Commodification of Empathy—An Integrative Narrative Review

The meteoric rise of nurse influencers on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok represents a paradigm shift in the history of the nursing profession, transforming care from a private, clinical interaction into a public, performative spectacle. While this digital visibility offers opportunities for global advocacy, it creates a complex dialectic between the democratization of health knowledge and the commodification of professional identity. This integrative narrative review explores how nurse influencers perform care as a cultural artifact, examining the implications for professional identity, ethical boundaries, and nursing culture through the integrated lenses of digital sociology and medical anthropology. Departing from a descriptive focus on stereotypes, this review utilizes Judith Butler’s theory of performativity as an ontological lens to analyze how professional identity is iteratively constituted through digital labor. A systematic search of PubMed, Scopus, CINAHL, and Google Scholar from January 2010 to January 2025 yielded 58 peer-reviewed sources. Data were synthesized using Braun and Clarke’s reflexive thematic analysis, facilitated by a constant comparative approach to bridge the gap between empirical findings and interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks. The synthesis identified 4 overarching themes: Performative Visibility, where digital platforms foster global solidarity but subject the profession to an “algorithmic gaze”; The Commodification of Care, where emotional labor is transformed into marketable “digital affective labor,” increasing burnout risk; Ethical Boundary Blur, characterized by the conflict between “relatable” storytelling and patient privacy; and Professional Hybridization, indicating a shift toward networked identities, particularly empowering in the Global South. Nurse influencers act as cultural catalysts; however, without robust digital literacy and ethical frameworks, the profession risks eroding public trust. Nursing education must prioritize “algorithmic competence” and reflexive ethics to ensure that the digital performance of care preserves the profession’s humanistic core.