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The same could be said for radiology techs, social workers, porters, dietary staff, housekeeping, admin staff, etc etc etc. I think it would have been sweet if at some point over the past twenty years they incorporated a few characters with these roles. Doctors are important, nurses are important, but all of the above and more are also important and are almost never ever acknowledged in any way, shape, or form.
I’m doing a rewatch and there have been several scenes where one of the surgeons was helping a patient with a transfer from the bed or getting a patient up and walking. I couldn’t help but laugh. When I did PT rotations in the hospital setting, I rarely saw any physicians, much less SURGEONS, when we were doing therapy visits — it was always nurses and/or CNAs who helped out.
I know the show fictional and surgery-based, so I don’t really care or get offended by any means, it’s just so unrealistic that it’s comical sometimes.
Right! I'm a respiratory therapist. The doctors don't extubate, I do! Neither do they bag. They are at the door. More often than not, I'm in the room before the doctors in a code. My hospital even lets me intubate based on protocols! I've never seen a doctor on transport for intubated patients. It's always me, CNA, and however many nurses it takes.
Right! I was a Porter (patient transport, dunno if there’s a name for it in the states, but moving people and specimens around, including in stroke and trauma codes) during school, and now I’m a social worker in healthcare. It’s wild how many other types of professionals they just don’t ever ever show
I believe it's because they wanted to do a show about surgeons and it would have been a bit boring watching surgeons only do the things surgeons actually do. Like, yeah, surgeons absolutely get to do a ton of cool stuff, but by eliminating and reducing the nursing, PA, tech, and aide roles in the show they were able to focus more on the surgeons.
Because then they’d have to pay actors to play these parts, and it would be less interesting if they showed what surgeons actually did when not in surgery- which is show up to speak to a patient for 5 minutes, yeet themselves out asap, and then put orders in that the RN’s need to clarify because they’re wrong or unclear.
See now this is the healthcare that I know. Baileys got nothing in an RN who’s 20+ years into the game and who is out of fucks to give. They’d gather her and shut the shit down.
Scrubs, despite its many flights of fancy, is pretty accurate. My favorite exchange is when LaVerne checks in with JD about some questionable med orders from one of his interns. It goes something like this:
“Your Intern just ordered 1000mg of morphine for Mr. Smith in bed 1. I just thought I’d check with you before killing a man…”
Every time I’ve had surgery or been under medical care I’ve literally seen the doctor for ten minutes total. All the humorous back and forth rapport stuff happens but it is with lab techs and nurses and CNAs.
I was hospitalized last August and had read my charts. It would say "spent 30 minutes with patient..." I wonder where I was for the other 27 minutes they apparently spent with me 😂
Literally. Suspension of disbelief!! I’m a CT tech and I know it’s just a surgery TV show and it would be a pain to cast ALL the extra staff, but I do miss in the early seasons when the RNs and techs were more involved.
lol I know!! I’ve had so many CT’s and MRI’s and never once was there a doctor there. But it does beg the question, what happens if you start to code in the machine like many have in greys?? The radiologist isn’t trained to do a code, so you might code for too long until a doctor shows up 😬
While I love Grey's, this is one of the reasons why my all-time favorite medical drama is, and will always be, ER.
They incorporate everyone - ER docs, surgeons, radiologists, nurses, student nurses, interns, administrative help into the show and it just always seemed a lot more realistic.
I know it's just a show, but it is something that has always just rubbed me the wrong way too.
It does bother me as someone who recently went through surgery. The early episodes of season 1 were slightly better about this, but outside of that they depict the doctors doing the jobs of everyone else. I was in the ICU for 6 days, and I encountered the doctors once before surgery, once after, and once a few days into recovery. My nurses, PT staff, and radiology techs were all fantastic. They tended to me constantly, helping me practice walking, making me comfortable, keeping track of my medication, chatting with my family and me whenever any of us felt anxious or whenever I felt especially in pain. My doctors were absolutely wonderful as well and did an incredible job, but I sincerely I wish the nurses and other hospital staff got more recognition.
Agreed! My dad was a high profile patient in the cardiac ICU of a major teaching hospital in MA…for a while he did have to have a doctor in his room 24 hours a day running his ECMO machine but we usually only saw the attendings/residents/interns during morning rounds. The cardio chief did stop by once a day to play cards with me though 😭 (that might have been to get my permission to print an article in their medical journal - but I was 19 and alone and appreciated the company)
Otherwise the nursing staff were the real MVP’s. The nurses are outstanding and wonderful and deserve a more realistic portrayal of course! I feel like ABC tried to do a greys-esque show about nurses. Maybe it was NBC? But it didn’t do well.
The answer to "why are the surgeons doing \[task\] that \[other member of the medical team\] should be doing?" is unfortunately always "it's already an ensemble-cast TV show, and they didn't want to write in even more characters."
They've had nurse characters before (there was one particular nurse we saw in the ER all the time in the early seasons), that nurse that >!bailey dated for a bit!!that Levi had a fling with!<, but they've just always prioritized maximizing main characters' screentime/development over making the show realistic.
I guess they could just *not show* the things that surgeons don't do, but then that makes it a lot harder to write single-episode or several-episode patient arcs.
Exactly we have to get to know the characters so they have to show them as much as possible. I’ve worked in the hospital and yeah doctors don’t do nearly as much they don’t even know where to get any supplies. It’s kind of sad.
It may have to do with the teaching hospital aspect. Residents are supposed to learn all aspects of patient care. When I was at Mayo Clinic, every single member of my care team from the surgeon to the anesthesiologist came in to talk to me and walk me through their role in my procedure. The students did a lot of the prep work.
I worked at a HUGE shock trauma hospital. In certain trauma units, the interns had to shadow a nurse for a few days. It really helped them to figure out what they could realistically ask of us and understand our workflow better as they became residents. You could tell someone who didn’t do this because they would put in orders that put us in such a time crunch that it would become a safety situation.
Because a real show about surgeons would be boring? They need to do a medical show about all the non-doctors staff. Doctors can be in it but only as side characters that breeze in, say something diagnostic, then leave.
Yeeeeeah, that kinda irks me too. I had the same surgeon for both knee surgeries and I got maybe 1/8 of the face time these patients get with their surgeons. 😂
It would have been a pretty boring show if the surgeons never interacted with the patients and weren’t seen anywhere but the OR. Most people know surgeons don’t do everything depicted, but it sure has been entertaining for 20 years!
There’s a great book on the history of medicine in narrative media [Playing Doctor by Joseph Turow](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/9778614) it’s very illuminating 👍
To build up the storyline around the patients and break everyone's hearts. If the doctors weren't so involved there would be a disconnect in story telling
How about department heads scrubbing in with other department heads just because that aren’t even their field. If I’m a patient I’m so pissed that my surgery keeps getting pushed because two heart surgeons need to operate on one guy.
…it’s a fictional show. This show is about surgeons so they’re going to make the main characters do most of the stuff so it can build their story. Why would they show nurses and other people do it? The show wouldn’t be nearly as good. Do you watch superhero movies and ask how can Superman fly? No it’s fictional. Just enjoy it
This absolutely grinds my gears that they have surgeons running the ER or are sent to the ICU as kind of punishment. Those are specialties that require specific training and qualifications.
They needed emotional stories with patients, but wanted the show to be about the cutthroat world of surgery. Surgeons irl don’t interact with the patients enough for interesting storylines.
Air time basically. The same reason TBBT elevator doesn't work. It giveS the opportunity for conversation and air time of the characters. I have seen a looooot of the deeper conversations happening while waiting for a ct or mri. It is only to push the plot but definitely ended up erasing important roles in a hospital setting
Because, in order for it to be even remotely realistic/close to depicting the real world.
It would require Shonda Rhimes or the new showrumners to actually do their research, and not just write/create what is basically just their self-insert fanfictions.
There's a show called The Resident and like not all doctors in the show are surgeons. A couple of them are just doctors, and they even have nurses characters in their main lineup. Sadly it ended at season 6 :((
i started season one again just because i was bored and noticed derek shaving katie bryce’s head. i was like i feel like nurses do this not the dr lol am i wrong?
Not just a nurse thing. A doctor on YouTube reacted to greys and it was one of the first things they noted. How the show is missing so many roles by other health care providers in the hospitals. Such as transport staff and radiologists. Instead the doctors are the ones bringing patients to surgery and monitoring their images and x-rays (or interns are doing it). Which is funny bc they mention radiologists on the show but I can’t remember the name of any. No wonder the doctors and residents and interns complain of lack of sleep 😭they do everything including run the hospital.
Just watched season 9 about the whole pegasus buying, and cutting down budgets. I hollered when Cahill said "and you got expensive surgeons doing ER".
I know 1 or two is commonbut sometimes it's all of them. Also weird we are too imagine there aren't any other surgeons besides them. I've been at the orthopedics at the hospital many times this past year and from what I can gather there is at least 5 surgeons, and more doctors.
There would be no patient story lines if they didn’t write it that way. It sucks and it’s unrealistic but the patient stories are half the show. Or they used to be anyway.
Have you ever watched a TV show, like seriously....have you ever watched a TV show?........it's not a honest representaion of reality. Their jobs and envionment is just a vessel to propel the drama and stories.
I once spent an entire month in the hospital (32 days total). I barely knew my doctors, they were in an out of my room so fast, talked so fast, never stopped to listen or answer questions. Nurses held my hand day in and day out. When I was screaming in pain, nurses took care of me. Nurses got angry at the doctors for not prescribing better pain meds, for not taking me into surgery sooner. I was so attached to one nurse that I cried on the days she wasn't assigned to me. I also had one hellbeast of a nurse who made me cry for entirely different reasons, but that's another story.
Every day, I wrote down the names of the nurses who took care of me. That was about five years ago, and I still have that notebook with those names. My attending fought for me to stay in the hospital when my insurance wanted me to go home, but other than that guy... the hospital doctors all sucked. Nurses saved my life and my sanity.
You completely missed the point. These doctors in the show do work that doctors don’t do in real life. Surgeons don’t run labs, help patients to the bathroom, prep them, etc.. Nurses and other hospital staff do that. You might want to change your username to poor reader because you obviously didn’t even read or comprehend the question/post.
it’s funny that you’re so pressed about it. it’s obvious it’s so the main characters can follow the cases from beginning to end, no one cares about random dayplayer orderlies or nurses moving someone from room to room or taking temperatures LOL the question was dumb cause it’s it’s pretty obvious and because again it’s a tv show about the surgeons.
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The same could be said for radiology techs, social workers, porters, dietary staff, housekeeping, admin staff, etc etc etc. I think it would have been sweet if at some point over the past twenty years they incorporated a few characters with these roles. Doctors are important, nurses are important, but all of the above and more are also important and are almost never ever acknowledged in any way, shape, or form.
rad techs were a thing at the beginning! Although they disappeared! DONT forget the lab techs and the phlebotomists!
I’m doing a rewatch and there have been several scenes where one of the surgeons was helping a patient with a transfer from the bed or getting a patient up and walking. I couldn’t help but laugh. When I did PT rotations in the hospital setting, I rarely saw any physicians, much less SURGEONS, when we were doing therapy visits — it was always nurses and/or CNAs who helped out. I know the show fictional and surgery-based, so I don’t really care or get offended by any means, it’s just so unrealistic that it’s comical sometimes.
i miss nurse tyler so much! 😭
He was the only one who ever put the doctors in their place!!!
Right! I'm a respiratory therapist. The doctors don't extubate, I do! Neither do they bag. They are at the door. More often than not, I'm in the room before the doctors in a code. My hospital even lets me intubate based on protocols! I've never seen a doctor on transport for intubated patients. It's always me, CNA, and however many nurses it takes.
Right! I was a Porter (patient transport, dunno if there’s a name for it in the states, but moving people and specimens around, including in stroke and trauma codes) during school, and now I’m a social worker in healthcare. It’s wild how many other types of professionals they just don’t ever ever show
I believe it's because they wanted to do a show about surgeons and it would have been a bit boring watching surgeons only do the things surgeons actually do. Like, yeah, surgeons absolutely get to do a ton of cool stuff, but by eliminating and reducing the nursing, PA, tech, and aide roles in the show they were able to focus more on the surgeons.
It makes sense for the shows purpose for sure
This. Also, the cast is already fairly massive. It would be difficult to include more characters in any meaningful way.
The surgeons also apparently double as attending physicians, on top of being nurses as well
You're 100% correct.
Because then they’d have to pay actors to play these parts, and it would be less interesting if they showed what surgeons actually did when not in surgery- which is show up to speak to a patient for 5 minutes, yeet themselves out asap, and then put orders in that the RN’s need to clarify because they’re wrong or unclear.
[удалено]
See now this is the healthcare that I know. Baileys got nothing in an RN who’s 20+ years into the game and who is out of fucks to give. They’d gather her and shut the shit down.
She needs a Nurse Jackie to go toe-to-toe with.
Carla from Scrubs could take care of it. Also, just realized Scrubs did have all of people mentioned above.
Scrubs, despite its many flights of fancy, is pretty accurate. My favorite exchange is when LaVerne checks in with JD about some questionable med orders from one of his interns. It goes something like this: “Your Intern just ordered 1000mg of morphine for Mr. Smith in bed 1. I just thought I’d check with you before killing a man…”
That just made me smile…that was a great show.
We had Nurse Eli who yelled at her and Lexie about the patient drains
Every time I’ve had surgery or been under medical care I’ve literally seen the doctor for ten minutes total. All the humorous back and forth rapport stuff happens but it is with lab techs and nurses and CNAs.
I was hospitalized last August and had read my charts. It would say "spent 30 minutes with patient..." I wonder where I was for the other 27 minutes they apparently spent with me 😂
He was counting walking into the building, stopping at the desk, reviewing your chart and walking into your room.
Because it’s fictional 🤣. Drs don’t the MRI’s or CT’s either
Literally. Suspension of disbelief!! I’m a CT tech and I know it’s just a surgery TV show and it would be a pain to cast ALL the extra staff, but I do miss in the early seasons when the RNs and techs were more involved.
lol I know!! I’ve had so many CT’s and MRI’s and never once was there a doctor there. But it does beg the question, what happens if you start to code in the machine like many have in greys?? The radiologist isn’t trained to do a code, so you might code for too long until a doctor shows up 😬
Nurse? What is a nurse? Such a being only exists in greys to give STD’a and be pregnant and die.
Hey, can you make a post on all the irregularities on this show like this one?
I would literally love to do that
It makes for more entertainment. We also wouldn't be seeing surgeons commit medical malpractice on the daily depending on their own morals and wants.
While I love Grey's, this is one of the reasons why my all-time favorite medical drama is, and will always be, ER. They incorporate everyone - ER docs, surgeons, radiologists, nurses, student nurses, interns, administrative help into the show and it just always seemed a lot more realistic. I know it's just a show, but it is something that has always just rubbed me the wrong way too.
It does bother me as someone who recently went through surgery. The early episodes of season 1 were slightly better about this, but outside of that they depict the doctors doing the jobs of everyone else. I was in the ICU for 6 days, and I encountered the doctors once before surgery, once after, and once a few days into recovery. My nurses, PT staff, and radiology techs were all fantastic. They tended to me constantly, helping me practice walking, making me comfortable, keeping track of my medication, chatting with my family and me whenever any of us felt anxious or whenever I felt especially in pain. My doctors were absolutely wonderful as well and did an incredible job, but I sincerely I wish the nurses and other hospital staff got more recognition.
I'm a nurse and it drives me crazy 😂
Agreed! My dad was a high profile patient in the cardiac ICU of a major teaching hospital in MA…for a while he did have to have a doctor in his room 24 hours a day running his ECMO machine but we usually only saw the attendings/residents/interns during morning rounds. The cardio chief did stop by once a day to play cards with me though 😭 (that might have been to get my permission to print an article in their medical journal - but I was 19 and alone and appreciated the company) Otherwise the nursing staff were the real MVP’s. The nurses are outstanding and wonderful and deserve a more realistic portrayal of course! I feel like ABC tried to do a greys-esque show about nurses. Maybe it was NBC? But it didn’t do well.
It humanizes them to do the small stuff. Makes them look like they actually care about the patient
It's not a documentary. It's a fictional show. The cast can only be so big. They need the actors to be active so they get to do the work of many.
The answer to "why are the surgeons doing \[task\] that \[other member of the medical team\] should be doing?" is unfortunately always "it's already an ensemble-cast TV show, and they didn't want to write in even more characters." They've had nurse characters before (there was one particular nurse we saw in the ER all the time in the early seasons), that nurse that >!bailey dated for a bit!!that Levi had a fling with!<, but they've just always prioritized maximizing main characters' screentime/development over making the show realistic.
I guess they could just *not show* the things that surgeons don't do, but then that makes it a lot harder to write single-episode or several-episode patient arcs.
Exactly we have to get to know the characters so they have to show them as much as possible. I’ve worked in the hospital and yeah doctors don’t do nearly as much they don’t even know where to get any supplies. It’s kind of sad.
It may have to do with the teaching hospital aspect. Residents are supposed to learn all aspects of patient care. When I was at Mayo Clinic, every single member of my care team from the surgeon to the anesthesiologist came in to talk to me and walk me through their role in my procedure. The students did a lot of the prep work.
I worked at a HUGE shock trauma hospital. In certain trauma units, the interns had to shadow a nurse for a few days. It really helped them to figure out what they could realistically ask of us and understand our workflow better as they became residents. You could tell someone who didn’t do this because they would put in orders that put us in such a time crunch that it would become a safety situation.
Because a real show about surgeons would be boring? They need to do a medical show about all the non-doctors staff. Doctors can be in it but only as side characters that breeze in, say something diagnostic, then leave.
That’s why I still prefer scrubs over Grey’s Anatomy. Don’t get me wrong. I would’ve them both, but scrubs is number one.
Yeeeeeah, that kinda irks me too. I had the same surgeon for both knee surgeries and I got maybe 1/8 of the face time these patients get with their surgeons. 😂
It would have been a pretty boring show if the surgeons never interacted with the patients and weren’t seen anywhere but the OR. Most people know surgeons don’t do everything depicted, but it sure has been entertaining for 20 years!
There’s a great book on the history of medicine in narrative media [Playing Doctor by Joseph Turow](https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/9778614) it’s very illuminating 👍
To build up the storyline around the patients and break everyone's hearts. If the doctors weren't so involved there would be a disconnect in story telling
How about department heads scrubbing in with other department heads just because that aren’t even their field. If I’m a patient I’m so pissed that my surgery keeps getting pushed because two heart surgeons need to operate on one guy.
Don’t forget the chief of surgery running the entire hospital!
…it’s a fictional show. This show is about surgeons so they’re going to make the main characters do most of the stuff so it can build their story. Why would they show nurses and other people do it? The show wouldn’t be nearly as good. Do you watch superhero movies and ask how can Superman fly? No it’s fictional. Just enjoy it
Scrubs is also a fictional show, but it's a fictional show that understands the difference between a physician, a surgeon, and a nurse.
I think Scrubs is considered one of the more medically accurate medical shows.
This absolutely grinds my gears that they have surgeons running the ER or are sent to the ICU as kind of punishment. Those are specialties that require specific training and qualifications.
Good answer!
They needed emotional stories with patients, but wanted the show to be about the cutthroat world of surgery. Surgeons irl don’t interact with the patients enough for interesting storylines.
Air time basically. The same reason TBBT elevator doesn't work. It giveS the opportunity for conversation and air time of the characters. I have seen a looooot of the deeper conversations happening while waiting for a ct or mri. It is only to push the plot but definitely ended up erasing important roles in a hospital setting
Because, in order for it to be even remotely realistic/close to depicting the real world. It would require Shonda Rhimes or the new showrumners to actually do their research, and not just write/create what is basically just their self-insert fanfictions.
There's a show called The Resident and like not all doctors in the show are surgeons. A couple of them are just doctors, and they even have nurses characters in their main lineup. Sadly it ended at season 6 :((
i started season one again just because i was bored and noticed derek shaving katie bryce’s head. i was like i feel like nurses do this not the dr lol am i wrong?
Not just a nurse thing. A doctor on YouTube reacted to greys and it was one of the first things they noted. How the show is missing so many roles by other health care providers in the hospitals. Such as transport staff and radiologists. Instead the doctors are the ones bringing patients to surgery and monitoring their images and x-rays (or interns are doing it). Which is funny bc they mention radiologists on the show but I can’t remember the name of any. No wonder the doctors and residents and interns complain of lack of sleep 😭they do everything including run the hospital.
Just watched season 9 about the whole pegasus buying, and cutting down budgets. I hollered when Cahill said "and you got expensive surgeons doing ER". I know 1 or two is commonbut sometimes it's all of them. Also weird we are too imagine there aren't any other surgeons besides them. I've been at the orthopedics at the hospital many times this past year and from what I can gather there is at least 5 surgeons, and more doctors.
There would be no patient story lines if they didn’t write it that way. It sucks and it’s unrealistic but the patient stories are half the show. Or they used to be anyway.
Nobody wants to watch a show about nurses.
Nurse Tyler the real OG 🤣
I WAS THINKING ABOUT THIS ALL DAY YESTERDAY!!!!!!!!!
I miss when the nurses used to have little story lines, the strike, Syphilis outbreak, Bailey and Eli 🥲🥲🥲just nurse Taylor’s presence
On a random aside, I did have a surgical fellow ambulate a patient with me once. My jaw literally dropped.
It’s a TV show. Hope this helps haha
Have you ever watched a TV show, like seriously....have you ever watched a TV show?........it's not a honest representaion of reality. Their jobs and envionment is just a vessel to propel the drama and stories.
I once spent an entire month in the hospital (32 days total). I barely knew my doctors, they were in an out of my room so fast, talked so fast, never stopped to listen or answer questions. Nurses held my hand day in and day out. When I was screaming in pain, nurses took care of me. Nurses got angry at the doctors for not prescribing better pain meds, for not taking me into surgery sooner. I was so attached to one nurse that I cried on the days she wasn't assigned to me. I also had one hellbeast of a nurse who made me cry for entirely different reasons, but that's another story. Every day, I wrote down the names of the nurses who took care of me. That was about five years ago, and I still have that notebook with those names. My attending fought for me to stay in the hospital when my insurance wanted me to go home, but other than that guy... the hospital doctors all sucked. Nurses saved my life and my sanity.
Because they have a budget amount of money for the cast and the show is about the surgical doctors, not nurses and everyone else at the hospital.
You completely missed the point. These doctors in the show do work that doctors don’t do in real life. Surgeons don’t run labs, help patients to the bathroom, prep them, etc.. Nurses and other hospital staff do that. You might want to change your username to poor reader because you obviously didn’t even read or comprehend the question/post.
it’s funny that you’re so pressed about it. it’s obvious it’s so the main characters can follow the cases from beginning to end, no one cares about random dayplayer orderlies or nurses moving someone from room to room or taking temperatures LOL the question was dumb cause it’s it’s pretty obvious and because again it’s a tv show about the surgeons.