In defense of FOX ’s The Resident

The public’s apparently insatiable appetite for medical drama continues unabated as yet another prime-time TV show set in a hospital has hit our screens. FOX’s The Resident has generated discussion like no other. This may simply be due to the fact it’s the first major launch in the era of widespread social media, but it seems to have enraged a vast swathe of our ranks. Has The Resident crossed a line or have we become a medical “generation snowflake”? Health care professionals don’t tend to admit that they watch medical shows. “Oh it’s too much like work!” is a common refrain, but magically most of us seem to have consumed ER, Scrubs, House, Grey’s Anatomy and many more. All of those launched before the advent of Twitter, so it’s hard to compare directly, but here is just a small selection of tweets provoked by The Resident. Lack of realism has never stopped health care professionals loving a TV show. Grey’s Anatomy is more soap than medical realism; House’s team were clearly the only people working at Princeton Plainsboro, forced to undertake every procedure themselves and whilst Scrubs has rightly won plaudits as most accurately capturing the banter and camaraderie that makes health care such a wonderful job, the medicine was rudimentary at best. But of course, it didn’t matter. Don’t get me wrong: Laughing at ludicrous science on TV is one of my favorite pastimes, but it’s done in jest and in the knowledge that we are not the inte...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Physician Hospital-Based Medicine Mainstream media Source Type: blogs