The Best Kind of Doctor: One Without a TV
As disappointing as it is when you're lying in a hospital bed, your life hanging in the balance, and the doctor who arrives to treat you barely resembles Noah Wylie or Patrick Dempsey, it's nevertheless a little disconcerting to learn that young doctors are learning how to do their jobs from shows like ER and Gray's Anatomy. Anesthesiologist Elizabeth Sinz, who is director of a "simulation center" where medical students learn how to handle emergency situations, says: "I see students all the time who show up and act like their favorite doctor on TV."
And it's not just a question of adopting a breezy bedside manner à la Clooney: A recent Canadian study found that many medical students don't know how to insert a breathing tube properly—because it's always being done wrong on ER! "Intubation is one of the many skills that physicians use with patients," points out Sinz, "and it's one of the skills where there is a life and death component."
We'll never vicariously enjoy the drama of a TV patient nearly choking to death in the same way again.
