Majoring in TV: Network dramas give pre-med students a taste of their future medicine

A recent surge in popularity in the medical show genre has provided many examples of doctors for the next generation’s pre-med students.

Care for a soapy, incestuous doc? Grey’s Anatomy. A depressing, most-likely-to-be-killed-in-the-line-of-duty doc? ER. Doctors acting like horny teenagers? Scrubs and Private Practice. And, for the more philosophically minded, Dr. Gregory House is the premier anti-hero.

These don’t exactly sound like the best role models for future generations. Thankfully, Columbia’s pre-med students agree.

“I don’t think most of these shows are very realistic in their portrayal of the physicians because they tend to dramatize their personal lives and the rarity and obscurity of the medical cases that they treat,” said Saira Siddiqui, BC ’09.

No one ever declared that television should accurately reflect professions, but since the advent of reality TV, more and more shows are trying to take a look into the real lives and real jobs of everyday people, from doctors to chefs.

Apparently the television industry discovered that office romances, affairs, gossip, promotions, friendship, and competition are all great examples of naturally occurring drama. As BC pre-med sophomore Evan Tamura explained, “Aspects of the hierarchy or medical cases and protocols are accurate, but television really vamps up the social relationships and conflicts.”

But of all the aspects of the medical profession that networks are willing to explore, why not all the preparation and schooling it takes to become a doctor? I would love to see how popular characters like Meredith Grey, John “JD” Dorian, or Doug Ross were like as undergraduate pre-med students. Would they have been chugging Red Bulls at Butler? Indulging in promiscuity with professors and TAs?

Unfortunately, these questions remain unanswered because most series directly introduce their new characters as interns—27- to 28-year-old adults who have completed four years of medical school and have started clinical rotations in their preparation to become fully licensed doctors of medicine.

Thanks to a lack of time or lack of interest, our community’s future doctors do not seem too concerned that these shows have created an overly dramatic, romanticized image of their profession, or that their undergraduate troubles are ignored. But one can’t help but wonder how enthusiastic they are about their future when they continuously repeat that they expect the life of a doctor to be much more mundane.

Caitlyn Gillikin, BC ’11, said, “They make the work a lot more glorious and exciting than it actually will be.” Shazeeda Bhola, also BC ’11, echoed her sentiments: “TV can’t be completely realistic, especially for the medical field. The show would be too depressing, and who would watch that?”

These responses might prompt one to wonder why students would choose the medical field to begin with. Then again, anyone capable of appreciating an undergraduate education full of 9 a.m. classes and intermediate chemistry must see something that I don’t see, although even Tamura admitted, “Most of what we learn here doesn’t seem directly related to what a doctor does.”

If that is the case, then maybe Grey’s Anatomy is more like an undergraduate education than I thought. If the typical day of a pre-med student is composed of serious science classes, the nights seem to involve some good old Grey’s-style fun. Sex, drinking, and meltdowns may not seem very doctorly, but according to my fellow classmates, a typical episode of Grey’s seems eerily similar to Columbia on a Thursday evening.