“The Pitt” impressed real doctors with its accuracy

Doctors and nurses who love “The Pitt” Max remember the moment when they realized that these are not other medical shows.

Caitlin Dwyer, a gray nurse in Milwaukee, drew attention to the character’s decision – contrary to intuition, but medically correct – NO in order to defibrillation of a patient with a specific type of heart failure.

Dr. Elizabeth Rempfer, a doctor attending Maryland, felt the edge of recognition during a messy and desperate waiting room.

For Dr. Tricii Pendergrast, a resident doctor at Ann Arbor, Michigan, he was a character who met with such an inexorable number of matters that even a trip to the bathroom was cut.

“For the first time I watched doctors on television that I felt like I could see them,” she said.

Most doctors learned a long time ago not to expect reality in the dramatization of their work. From the early days of “General Hospital” to “Gray’s Anatomy” and his various spinoffs, to the latest hits, such as “The Good Doctor” and “Brilliant Minds”, television medical dramas tend to have a ponderous drama, lightweight. bow.

But “The Pitt”, with the participation of Veteran “Er” Noah as a senior doctor in the fictitious center of Trauma in Pittsburgh, partly broke away from the package because of his extraordinary accuracy. Since the premiere last month (fresh episodes arrive on Thursdays), the series gathered an ardent following ambulance doctors, many of whom expressed the surprise and gratitude on the platforms of such ThicketIN LinkedIn AND Reddit.

“I waited for them to screw up like other medical shows that I watched,” said Dr. Graham Walker, a doctor in San Francisco in an interview. “But I went through the whole episode and they never really did.”

“Pitt” was created by R. Scott Gemmilla, a former writer in “ER” and “NCIS: Los Angeles”, and is produced by John Wells (“Er”, “The West Wing”, “Third Watch”), which also He directed the pilot episode and the finale of the season. He follows Michael Robinavitch (Wyle), known as “Dr. Robby ”, conducting devoted personnel of doctors and nurses through extremely busy but generally likely change in a up-to-date ambulance.

In a model resembling a thriller to counteract terrorism “24”, each episode follows an hour of shift, chronically chirping the efforts of staff in order to manage various cases under the pressure of administrators to improve performance indicators. (In August last year, the property of Michael Crichton, a writer and screenwriter who created “ER” in 1994, Subed Warner Bros. Television, Gemmill, Wells and Wyle for violating the contractArguing that “Pitt” is an unauthorized “ER” restart in disguise. The case is ongoing.)

In an interview with Gemmill and Wells, they said that the goal was to create such an legitimate performance as possible. Recent changes in real culture surrounding medicine-inflorescences of primary care, enduring trauma of pandemic, crawling privatization of hospitals-a different, more well-established concept of drama. And the fact that the series is on the max, which allows for the degree of graphic language and images that are not possible in the transmitting network, encouraged more to write gloves.

“We wanted to stand out without limiting the corners for medicine,” said Gemmill, sitting next to Wells during a video conversation with Los Angeles. “The drama will always be there in reality of such a place like the emergency department.”

Wells noticed that the realism of telling stories also helped make heroes more related.

“These are not people who lead an effective life and drive a fancy car,” he said. “These are people who perform public service and devote themselves to helping people who are really in need.”

The creators hired doctors at every level of production.

Medical cases are scenarios by the writer and producer Joe Sachs, another “ER” graduate who was an ambulance doctor before he began producing television programs. A team of medical consultants – most of which actively exercise – then writes detailed notes and choreography, explaining what treatment should be carried out and how. On the set, consultants train the main actors through their performance and providing lines. A few actors from the background who appear on the screen are actually nurses in real life.

“Many preparatory work is at stake, much more than I expected,” said Dr. Elizabeth Ferreira, a doctor at the emergency room in Los Angeles, who works as a consultant in the series. “What stocks are needed? What prosthetics should be made? Is there nudity? What should be on monitor screens? There are so many nuances that introduce matters to implement. “

While some doctors have difficulty watching other medical programs because of glaring inaccuracies (incorrect terminology, nonsense life signs, inexplicable pure thickets), “Pitt” sometimes is the opposite problem – some sequences are so realistic that they can cause emotional fruts.

Several doctors said that they were overwhelmed by the leaflet representation of the character of Wyle in the respirator overalls on the entire pandemic list. Other scenes, including those in which Dr. Robby and adult children of an elderly patient observe how he takes his last breath; And another, in which the collapse of the mother pierces the hospital’s dinner, also hit the house.

“There are moments when I literally feel that I am watching a change at work,” said Rempfer, a doctor from Maryland who works at the emergency room. “Sometimes I have to turn it off and put on” lost “or something completely different.”

Despite all the efforts to legitimate, not everything in the series is obviously faithful to life. It’s still television. Doctors said that even a enormous hospital in a enormous city is unlikely to have such a enormous amount of trauma in one shift. And some of the presented cases and interventions would take much longer a solution in reality.

Habitual criticism concerned the presentation of chest compressions, which in real life look much more violent than on “Pitt”.

“Nobody ever has them well,” said Pendergrast.

But the most common reaction was gratitude. For many, observing everything the heroes endure in the series, he calmed down the pain they didn’t even know.

“Like many doctors, I went through all these scenarios myself, but I never really stopped thinking:” What did I just experience? ” – said Walker from San Francisco, who works in an antenna in an ambulance. “I hope that this program can aid us be a little lovely for ourselves.”