Post created by Maggie
My dear friends.
The rise of the television in the last decade or so has brought many things to society. Prime time TV, breaking news broadcasts, hours of entertainment and a noise that fills the often silent voids. As the viewership for television has dramatically increased, the need to please the demand has jumped significantly. To this, we hungry watchers can give thanks for our favorite programs. Monday Night Bachelor and Thursday Night Grey’s Anatomy make my weekly calendar month to month!
I am a sucker for a night in with tasty snacks and good company and this era of television provides a brilliant platform to do just that. I have dabbled in many genres; from action and what I call “shoot-em’-up shows”, to a good tear jerker like This is Us, I am constantly being drawn back to medical shows. With a nurse as a mother and a nursing student as an older sister, medical terminology was part of my upbringing. I guess that made me bite the bug, and from a young age I enjoyed trying to keep up. I thrive on Grey’s Anatomy, Chicago Med, The Good Doctor and even Private Practice.
With a somewhat self-proclaimed extensive Medical Television background, I lead myself to ask the question: how accurate are these shows? As a pre-nursing student, I have found a great amount of entertainment in going back through the old and new medical TV shows, weeding through the misleading parts and identifying the truths. Some things are laughable. Others hit it right on the head with accuracy. I will list what I found to be Truths vs Lies that are often depicted in nighttime medical television.
*DISCLAIMER: I am a mere 20 year old college student. Not even close to a connoisseur. Just a gal with an opinion and observations.
TRUTHS:
Night shifts are tricky and mistakes do tend to occur here more often than during the day.
There IS chaos in a hospital setting
Conflicts do occur among staff members
Emergency Rooms attract a variety of cases- extreme and basic.
A hierarchy does exist in the medical field
SOME medical terminology and procedures mentioned are true and doable and are done in real life. [emphasis on some]
Residents/medical learners do make mistakes and learn from such mistakes
Budget cuts and strikes occur all the time and are a driving force in the care patients receive
Hospitals have an HR department that handles behind the scenes that may occur.
LIES
Doctors are NOT around and available for the small things
There is a lot less fraternization in the workplace than what is depicted
Most doctors do not break protocol at all, or as often.
Nurses do a LOT more than just comfort and IV’s.
Not nearly as many deaths in real life
Significantly less ethical issues
Some procedures that are done either do not exist, or may contain many more steps than what is done on TV
Not every doctor is “the best in the nation”
doctors /surgeons do not do EVERYTHING. In the real world there are specialists, and duties shown on TV being done by one doctor is usually a shared practice among many.
There is not that much drama in a hospital or medical practice.
Doctors are nurses have a harder time picking their ‘speciality’
CPR is not that easy.
There is a lot less competition among medical and nursing students
We all know prime time TV should not be our means of learning. I am not going to watch all 15 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy and be able to go to a hospital and be a doctor [no matter what I think I know!]. While this is something we know, it is easy to gain an inaccurate depiction of the medical field. As I continue on with my studies in anatomy, genetics, biology and more, I hope to be able to debunk the myths we see and gain a better understanding of what it takes to be a medical professional.
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