The New Reality
TV series captures technical as well as emotional drama of hospital life

By Beth Ulrich, Ed.D, RN, South Central Editor
July 22, 2002

A number of years ago, a television series called "Lifeline" followed a different hospital doctor each week. It was one of the first shows to present the reality of health care-that some people live and some people die. That reality didn't match what the public wanted to believe about hospitals, and the show had a relatively short run.

Last year, when Tropical Storm Allison flooded the Texas Medical Center and many patients had to be evacuated, the media-seemingly still attached to the fantasy that we can save everyone who comes into the hospital-tried to make an issue about the number of patients who died the night of the flood. That number-which would seem normal to those of us who work in health care given that one of the hospitals was a major trauma center and the others were tertiary hospitals with heavily used ERs-seemed surprising to the media and the public. It brought home the point yet again that how we see hospitals and how the public sees hospitals are vastly different.

One of the latest forays into reality television, "Houston Medical," (See Page 3) may be helping the public to better understand our world. Not all the patients in the show have had positive outcomes, but based on television ratings, people are continuing to watch. What this show does differently is present the personal side of both the staff and the patients. It's not perfect.

The cameras sometimes focus longer than necessary on grieving families, and too often when we see nurses they're not identified as nurses. On the positive side, the public sees the compassion and caring exhibited by the staff. They see teamwork. They also see how quickly the teams activate when a patient needs them.

The producers also have not edited the tapes so that the staff appears perfect. Rather, the full range of personality traits-from frustration and helplessness to joy, from humility to occasional arrogance that we see at work every day-comes through. With every episode, it becomes more evident to viewers that health care professionals rarely can compartmentalize their work and not have it influence the rest of their lives, nor can what goes on in their lives not influence their work.

As a bonus to those of us who work or have worked in the Texas Medical Center, and especially at Memorial Hermann Hospital, the series has given us a chance to see our colleagues shine. Some of our hometown heroes are being seen across the country. In addition, the show's focus on pediatric nurse Kirk Spencer, RN, may do more than any advertisement ever could to recruit men into nursing and help dispel a few stereotypes about nurses.

"Houston Medical" appears to be succeeding at helping deliver an important message: In hospitals, we do what may appear to outsiders to be miracles every day, but even when patient outcomes aren't always successful, it's not for a lack of trying.

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