Reply to The Pitt, new HBO Max show w Noah Wyle

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I am still in the middle and am enjoying the show, but there is one thing bothering me. I hate how several of the women related to patients are portrayed as "unreasonable." For example, the daughter who wanted to intubate her father despite his dnr, the woman who did not want to donate her son's organs and the mother who does not want her son to get a spinal tap.

On an unrelated note, I wonder if anyone from the show team also worked on The Imposters. Two of the actors from that show are on this one. [/quote]

Very true, although that was true for the patients in general, the guy who punched the nurse, McKay's ex, the kid with the hit list, the dad who got poisoned. Doctors >>>  patients.[/quote]

I love this show and I think been drawn to it in part because I've had several ER experiences in the last year and am still processing the trauma of those experiences so much of what is shown on The Pitt is on topic for that. And I had some amazing doctors and nurses during my hospital experiences and I do really appreciate how the show represents what the do and what they go through.

But I also had some really awful experiences in the ER and the show doesn't make any attempt to show what it's like to be a patient in an ER, and especially what it's like for a patient having one of the worst days of their life. I also think it would be realistic for the show to portray at least one of the staff (likely a nurse) just being straight up mean to patients. Because that's real. Everyone on the show is so unendingly kind and professional and amazingly that is true of so many people who work in emergency medicine. But there are pretty much always people who have either reached their breaking point that day (understandably, these are people who do in fact get spit on, yelled at, hit, etc., and I don't blame people for breaking under that) or who are simply not suited for it at all and are just jerks. That's a very real part of the ER experience and the show would be more honest if they showed that, if one of the nurses was just kind of an ahole or if you saw patients verbally mistreated where the patient really has not done anything to deserve it (so different than Robbie showing the measles dad the morgue room to scare him into letting them do the spinal tap, which was inappropriate but you understand because the measles parents had established themselves as unreasonable and kind of stupid).

I would be interested to see them explore that in another season. Not everyone is as patient and kind as Robbie and Dana and the rest of the staff. Sometimes a patient takes a stray that is totally undeserved, or gets stuck in an administrative hell while they are in real pain, or they don't know how to navigate the system and it results in substandard care. I'd like to see that because it's a very real part of what happens in the ER every day too.[/quote]

[b]What about the sickle cell lady who was treated like an animalistic drug seeker? The obese lady who was nearly misdiagnosed just because she’s fat? 
[/b]
I agree the staff are way too idealistic. Normally you get way more coolness and indifference than outright abuse. Like you’re just another number.

HOWEVER, I don’t want to see patients be treated disrespectfully for the sake of realness unless the perpetrator is appropriately disciplined.

Anyone watch Pulse? That was such a joke the way they treated disciplinary issues.

[/quote]

Neither of these storylines are told from the patient perspective. And the woman with sickle cell was immediately identified as such by Mohan, who then immediately lectured the EMTs or cops (can't remember which) who brought her in. The obese patient was treated respectfully and kindly and the storyline was actually ambiguous -- she was misdiagnosed and Collins suggested to McKay that it was because of her weight. But if so, it was unconscious bias -- McKay didn't say or do anything to indicate that she was discriminating and even when Collins brings it up, she's unsure about it (but also not overly defensive or dismissive of the idea, because again, all the doctors in the show are incredibly professional and caring). Your left thinking it could have been bias but it also could have been a hectic day in the ED and maybe McKay would have made the same mistake with a non-obese patient because she's an R2 and might not be as practiced at spotting post-partum complications.

It actually would be interesting to see a situation like that from the patient's POV, because you could get a better sense of whether McKay was being biased. Was she dismissive? Did she ask about the patient's weight or weight- related issues while being dismissive of the fact that the woman has given birth only a few days prior? We just have no idea.

The show is about the healthcare professionals, I get it. And I love it. I just think there is an opportunity for some interesting nuance if the introduce more patient POV. They don't have to make the docs and nurses villains. They could show what it is to sit in a hallway bed or an exam room for hours, and not really understand what you are waiting on. Or how not understanding a question in your initial workup might result in an important symptom being missed. Or just how everything about the ER is foreign and scary to most patients and how that overwhelm can make it hard to communicate.[/quote]

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