Another Medical TV Show

Well, the Gods of TV have put out yet another medical TV show to compete with the likes of ER (NBC), Scrubs (NBC), House (FOX), and a few others that didn't make the cut. This one is intriguing to me because it is about surgical interns and is set in Seattle. Because I am from Seattle and did a surgery internship I couldn't help to be curious about the show.

I saw the first episode and there were some glaring inaccuracies as there are with all of the medical shows:

1) All of the interns were on call for the first 48 hours. first of all, OSHA rules put into effect a couple of years ago mandate an 80 hour workweek limit and no more than 30 hours at a time. What was funny was that all of the interns on the same service were on call at the same time. Laypeople may or many not know this, but the whole point of "taking call" is so that not everyone on the service has to be in the hospital at the same time on the same night. You rotate call so the others on the service can sleep at home.

2) Surgeons don't wear their stethoscopes around their necks. We put them in our pockets. Only people in the ER or Internal Medicine-based specialities do that. ER was a particular bad offender as they always showed the stereotypical surgeon prick Rocket Romano wearing a gold-plated one. Actually, I know plenty of surgeons who don't carry stethoscopes.

3) Patrick Dempsey is no surgeon. I hate to go on stereotypes, but let's just say that he looks like a thinker and not a doer. We surgeons, being narcissistic to a degree, like to think of ourselves as men (and women) of action or people that appreciate instant gratification. The internists (aka Internal Medicine-based specialties) like to pontificate or what we call "mentally masturbate." No offense.

4) General Surgeons do not perform Brain Surgery. In the first episode, Patrick Dempsey's character, a general surgeon, performs brain surgery on a young girl with a Subarachnoid Hemorrhage. First of all, General Surgeons typically operate on the abdomen and its contents. If there are injuries injuries to the thorax (chest) then they get a CardioThoracic Surgeon involved. If there are injuries to the brain and its contents then they get Neurosurgery involved. That's the beauty of subspecialization.

5) Why doesn't anyone wear eye protection. Having bleeding patients around you and no eye protection is pretty dangerous because you don't know what people have. Hep C, Hep B, and HIV are all real and out there.

That said, the show is kind of entertaining and perhaps a positive (albeit distorted) view of medicine for the viewing audience. It shows that we work our asses off, get abused on a daily basis, and take good care of patients at the same time.

I still think that Scrubs is the best because if you can't make a show with some accuracy, at least make it funny.