ER, Healthcare & GSWs
First allow me to introduce myself [this is my first post on The Issue blog, and I think it only appropriate]. My name is Stephen, I’m a Co-founder & editor of The Issue. I can always be reached directly at Stephen@TheIssue.com. I look forward to the creative process of writing, but mostly to the interaction with readers-so introduce yourself and comment at will.
If the purpose of this venue is to interact with our readers by [idealistically?] creating a human being with typed/read words, I’ll start with a confession…. I just watched an episode of ER. Few things are better than DVD on TV, but this guilty pleasure is particularly guilty - I mean, George Clooney threw in the towel years ago. After a particularly nail-biting and seat-edge inducing episode in which myriad medical miracles saved daughters, mothers and grandmothers, I started thinking about how pop culture [and the glorification of medicine therein] defines our perceptions of the health industry.
A decent number of cases in ER are dramatic GSW’s [gun-shot wounds] and MVA’s [motor vehicle accidents]. [I’m down with the lingo] There’s yelling, O neg transfusions and applause. The pupil-dilating traumas are inter-dispersed with the occasional foot-stuck-in-toilet and accidental bee swallow. The critical and anecdotal cases are fun to watch but ignore the the vast majority of ER patients, and in doing so contribute to damaging misconceptions about the health industry. Most people who walk into a hospital emergency room do so because they don’t have a regular doctor or insurance. There’s no other place to go……
No matter your political persuasion, you probably agree that a lack of coverage afflicts the whole system…. but with the way shows like ER portray hospitals and healthcare, it’s pretty difficult for people to understand how and why.
Tags: Healthcare, Pop Culture
March 7th, 2008 at 12:07 pm
While I believe its true that TV doctor shows certainly inject us with more drama than medicine(10 cc’s? 20?), I don’t think this necessarily contributes to so called “damaging misconceptions.” On the contrary, I think ER (particularly compared to its soap opera siblings Grey’s Anatomy, and even to some degree, House) strives to show some of the major and very real flaws in the health care system.
Working at an inner city county hospital (Chicago County General is no Princeton Plainsboro or Seattle Grace), the doctors in ER are constantly struggling with lack of funding for new equipment, homeless patients, illegal immigrants, and the uninsured, understaffing, and other common and very real ER scenarios. I remember one particular episode when Dr. Carter is begged by a father to delay the diagnosis of his son’s diabetes until his new job’s insurance kicks in - which later results in pretty serious repercussions for both parties. Now, certainly these scenes were infused with some pretty serious melodrama (a father’s tears and prideless begging as he gazes at his comatose son contrasted with the moral struggle playing out on Dr. Carter’s handsome and stricken face is nothing if not great tv) - but regardless, this seems a prevalent and somewhat common predicament doctors in public hospitals find themselves confronting. Moreover, ER portrays an overworked and underpaid staff more realistically than say Gray’s Anatomy, where the interns seem to be exhausted not so much from 10 hour surgeries as from constant romantic liasons in various janitorial closets.
So while I’m sure I’m a little biased (no one loves George Clooney in scrubs with that “I just spent all night saving children” stubble than this girl), but if anything, I see the success and survival of the medical drama to be inspiring more than misinforming. After all, if people are still interested in the goings on of hospitals, however fictitious they may be, they’re still engaging in the issue of health care on some level. And as long as they’re engaging, they’re still capable of caring.
March 10th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
take em’ down vic. tear his arguments apart like a nice laceration.
April 6th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
I adore this site! I can stay up all night just to have fun and see new posts. I love to spend my free time this way
April 9th, 2008 at 5:56 am
Your blog is getting better and better! Previous posts were good, but this one is just FABULOUS.