Letters to the Editor
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Thank you
Thank you for finally saying what I have thought for years. I stopped watching "doctor" shows a long time ago. It is not just that they are so short of reality. They insult the nursing profession.
I stopped watching ER with the first episode when the first patient through the doors was a nurse who had taken an overdose. This was the best way they could think of to introduce this nurse as a permanent cast member???????????????
Long ago, when I was in nursing school, we all went down to the TV room to watch Ben Casey and Dr. Kildare. Even back then, we noticed how the same nurse seemed to be working 24/7. As long as one showed up, it didn't seem to matter who it was.
If the only reason people were in hospitals is because they needed 24 hour physician care, hospitals would be empty. Some do need extensive, time consuming medical intervention. The only thing that ALL patients need is 24 hour NURSING CARE.
Thanks again.
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You think?
I know that there are also good and caring doctors and nurses out there, but the proportion of bad ones is staggering.
-- Donna H.
Almost half of medical students graduate in the bottom half of their class.
I work for a newspaper and I promise you, it's nothing like television or movies.
-- bigrafx
Next yout going to tell me that working for a TV station is not like The Mary Tyler Moore Show.
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House = fantasy, hospital = reality
About 90 percent of the responders here are not able to grasp that simple equation. Don't like House? For god's sakes don't watch!
Most of you believe that 24 is some kind of front for the Bushies anyway, so why do you even have Fox still programmed into your TV? Hugh Laurie is a fine actor and is god-damned hilarious on the show. The rest of the characters are window dressing. Fancy, obscure diseases are completely fascinating and entertaining, assuming: 1. you don't have the disease, 2. you're not continuously googling their incidence rates.
If I want that hospital experience @ home, I'll take a dump on the coffee table, pee on the walls, and hack up a few live chickens and toss their parts around my bedroom.
Get over yourselves. Turn off the friggin Tele and take a walk.
Scrubs is another show. When someone complains about that show, hey, now you have material!
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hollywood is as hollywood does
Truly, I am not biased against the young and gorgeous. Really I'm not. But I cannot watch the mentioned hospital programs as well as the lawyer ones. It just irritates me to no end the brillance and complicated phrases that comes out of the mouths of all those gorgeous character doctors, nurses, lawyers, etc.
It isn't that I don't believe that the incredibly young and gorgeous could not have spent years & years in education to be able to so learned in difficult subjects, but I've never ever seen any real life examples of it. The incredibly young and gorgeous are always the dullest folks in any given group. Not that there is anything wrong with that, they have purpose, I suppose...as in playing doctors and lawyers on television.
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A quick follow-up
Only the profoundly stupid get their 'information' from TV dramas. An enterprising person wanting to solve THAT health crisis would write, pitch and produce a mental health drama called 'Playing in Interstate Traffic'.
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What would "Willow" say about this?
There was a Buffy episode from Season 4, Buffy and the Scooby Gang are watching a Roadrunner cartoon. As Wile E. Cyote goes flying from a cliff, Buffy solemly notes "That could never happen." Willow replies "Right. That's why they're called cartoons and not documentaries."
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Sigh...
Christ, I had no idea those in the medical profession could be quite so boorish about a television show.
When someone makes a drama about engineers and Salon publishes a real eye-roller of an article on it, I'll be sure to saddle up the high horse and post letter after letter of "Jones, P.E.? It's SO fake!" "How could anyone even like that, real engineers are not the same!"
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Sorry, nurses
I love you in real life, but in my fantasy life, where TV belongs, I like to watch House.
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No kidding , huh?
News Flash!!!! TV is not reality. Who would have thought it?
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And?
What is your point? That TV is unrealistic?
I guess if I were 3 and I had just watched my first ever TV show, that might have meant something.
But thank you for stating the obvious.
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The Beautiful Hospital
I couldn't agree more with the author of this article. Not surprisingly I was a nurse for nearly 20years, I say not surprisingly because my experience is very similar. Too bad someone doesn't do a show about how NURSES problem solve, find the clues, solve the puzzles and save patients on a regular basis. Is anyone in Hollywood listening? And, by the way, Scrubs for all of it's silliness is the closest thing to what a hospital, at least a teaching hospital, is really like.
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It's called Entertainment
My buddies and I get together sometimes to do the geek things we like to do. We build computers, we cook, we drink, we play ball, and we enjoy talking about our favorite television shows. Being technical guys, we tend to like shows like Battlestar Galactica, CSI, and all things Star Trek.
Being the technical people we are, we understand that all the things on TV may not necessarily be like they are in real life. For instance, computers do not make beeping noises when text is typed on the screen. We know that some of the fancy forensic work done on CSI is just not possible. (We actually tried to recreate a scene in which information was extracted from a photo using digital imaging software. Being all well versed in Photoshop and other imaging software, the scene in CSI was pure fancy).
My obvious point is, yes, I understand that Hollywood can take liberties with real life. However, isn’t that what we want? As someone who works in the medical profession, I would think that you would want an escape from the real life human drama you deal with every day. I know I want to. After working all day in an office, I like to come home and watch The Office on TV, where things are crazy, funny, and not real. I want to believe that we can talk to our computers and have them make us hot coffee. I like to see Grisom catch the bad guy by using all of these amazing tools. It's an escape. We can't fault TV for taking certain liberties. After all, when TV takes away the scripted drama, we get reality TV, and who needs any more of that?
If you are looking for real medical drama, I suggest Untold Stories of the ER on TLC.