ER and Scrubs get positive comments, while House, M.D. gets almost universally panned.
MedPage Today performed a survey showing that 90 percent of respondents felt that medical shows on television impacted the doctor-patient relationship.
It’s interesting to read the almost universal condemnation of Fox’s House, M.D., saying that the show “gives a very bad name to physicians and the medical profession,” and that, “House is the worst on all levels.”
One benefit is that the shows have tremendous power to educate the public, with tens of millions viewers each week. One recent example is the use of the surgical checklist on a pivotal episode of ER.
Medical television shows have come a long way since Marcus Welby, and like them or not, continue to wield significant influence with both patients and their relationships with physicians.
Related posts:
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- Doctors need to take ownership of the medical profession
- Voters versus lobbyists
- Why can’t young doctors intubate patients correctly? Blame television
- Sid Schawb takes on the medical TV shows
- Some lawyers say defensive medicine isn’t real, but this doctor shows us otherwise
- Local television news may be using pre-packaged health stories
{ 10 comments }
Television doctors –
As a first year medical student I was a bit pleasantly surprised that a lecture on public perception of physicians due to their portrayal on television was incorporated into the curriculum.
Upon reflection I must admit that a great deal of my own understanding of medicine came from watching E.R. religiously while in grade school and college. That certainly changed when I was exposed to actual clinical settings but it nevertheless raised serious concern as to the influence that these fictional characters may have over the public.
With House, M.D. maybe patients will expect us all to be intolerably rude.
i like scrubs. it is the most realistic.
I think House is fun to watch for a medical professional. I think it’s a brilliant show and don’t enjoy Scrubs or ER as much.
However, I would be absolutely horrified if the public had misconceptions about their rights and strictly monitored ethics of doctors, after watching House! A lot of it is anathema in medical practice; I remember recoiling in horror and/or yelling at the screen ‘But, but, you can’t do that! You can’t get away with it! That will never work!’
There’s just no doctor that’s like House. Even in his fictional world, he’s living in the margins of it as an almost mythical legend.
Realized I might need to change my bedside manner skills when my younger daughter said I reminded her of this “House M.D” guy…and what specialty is he anyways, does Craniotomies, ECT, but he’s also an expert in Infectious Disease, Peds,OB/GYN, Surgery, ENT, Psych… most be a Family Practitioner…. guy’s gonna starve only seein one patient a week though….
Frank, M.D.
I’m not a medical professional, but I enjoy House for what it is: another version of Sherlock Holmes with a thin veneer of medical setting. Criticizing it for bad medicine is sort of like criticizing Battlestar Galactica for unrealistic space flight: completely valid but kind of beside the point.
The problem with doing medicine “right” on TV is that it would make bad television. Shows like Scrubs and St. Elsewhere (and to some extent ER) succeeded by making the actual work of medicine secondary to the ensemble activity in hallways and break rooms and outdoors.
How can we leave Grey’s Anatomy out of this discussion?
If I was a woman in medicine, which I am not (I am a man in medicine), I would be offended by the presentation of women in medicine as more concerned with their social lives (and sleeping with their attendings) than with learning how to be doctors.
When I watched 1 episode (and only 1 episode, I never watched it again) with my wife, I had to convince her that my residency (I was married at the time)was nothing like this.
A family practitioner
That’s odd, I was just talking to the ophthalmologist across the street and he thought House was fantastic.
Myself, I haven’t watched a medical TV series since St. Elsewhere…and then I went to med school.
ER? Wow, I’m losing respect for my profession!
scrubs
In the early days of House, I often suspected that he said some of the things doctors want to say to the more annoying patients. These days, it’s becoming more of a soap.
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