“The Pitt” impressed the accuracy of the real doctors.

The doctors and nurses who love Max's “Pit” recall the moment they realised they weren't like any other medical program.

Caitlyn Dwyer, a Milwaukee accusation nurse, not defibrilling a patient without a pulse, but rather paying attention to character decisions (counter-intuitive but medically correct).

Dr. Elizabeth Lempfer, a doctor in Maryland, felt that she was perceived by the depiction of the chaotic, desperate waiting room.

For Dr. Tricia Pendergrast, a resident doctor in Ann Arbor, Michigan, it was a character who faced a relentless caseload that even a trip to the bathroom was cut short.

“This is the first time I've seen a doctor on TV.

Most medical professionals have long ago learned that they don't expect reality from the dramatization of their work. From the early days of General Hospital to Glaze Anatomy and its various spinoffs, to recent hits such as Good Doctor and Brilliant Mind, TV medical dramas tend to be heavy on dramas, and It's become. medicine.

However, “The Pitt,” starring “ER” veteran Noah Weil as a senior doctor at the fictional trauma center in Pittsburgh, has partially escaped the pack due to its extraordinary accuracy. Since its premiere last month (a new episode arrives Thursday), the show has garnered the enthusiastic support of real-life emergency room doctors.

“I was waiting for them to get messed up like any other medical program I've seen,” San Francisco doctor Dr. Graham Walker said in an interview. “But I got through the entire episode, but they didn't actually do it.”

“The Pitt” was created by R. Scott Gemmill, former writer of “ER” and “NCIS: Los Angeles” and produced by John Wells (“ER”, “The West Wing”, “Third Watch”). He's an executive. , also directed the pilot episode and the season finale. “Dr. “Lobby” leads a dedicated staff of doctors and nurses through extremely busy but generally plausible changes in modern emergency rooms.

In a model reminiscent of the counter-terrorism thriller 24, each episode tracks an hour of shifts and records staff efforts to manage a variety of cases, whilst reducing the pressure from managers. (Last August, the property of novelist and screenwriter Michael Criton, who created “ER” in 1994, sued Warner Bros. TV, Gemmill, Wells and Weil for breach of contract, and “Pitt” was He claimed it was fraudulent: “We're rebooting in disguise.

In an interview, Gemmill and Wells said the purpose was to create as authentic depictions as possible. Recent changes in the real world culture surrounding medicine — the decline of primary care, the enduring trauma of the pandemic, and the creeping privatization of hospitals — have been loaned out to another, more grounded concept of drama. And the fact that the show is at Max encouraged a more glove-off approach to writing, as it allows for graphic languages ​​and images that are not possible on broadcast networks.

“We wanted to distinguish between the drugs by not turning them into horns,” Gemmill said, sitting next to Wells during a video call from Los Angeles. “Drama always exists in the reality of places like the emergency department.”

Wells noted that storytelling realism also helps make the characters more accessible.

“These are not people who live attractive lives and drive flashy cars,” he said. “These are people who provide public services and are dedicated to helping people who are truly in need.”

The creators employed doctors at all levels of production.

The medical case is written by writer and producer Joe Sachs, another “ER” alumni who was an emergency room doctor before he began producing the TV show. A team of medical consultants (most of whom are actively practicing) writes detailed notes and choreography explaining what treatments and how to do them. On the set, consultants coach lead actors through performance and line delivery. And some of the background actors displayed on the screen are actually real nurses.

“We've been working with the show to help people understand how they're doing,” said Dr. Elizabeth Ferreira, a doctor in the emergency room in Los Angeles who works as a consultant for the show. “What supplies do you need? Which prosthetics do you need to make? Are there nudes? What do you need on the monitor screen? There are many nuances to make the case come true.”

Some doctors struggle to watch other medical programs due to inaccurate inaccuracies (false terms, meaningless vital signs, inexplicable clean scrubs), but “pit” is sometimes I raise the opposite issue.

Several health professionals said they were overwhelmed by the fleeting portrayal of Weil's character wearing a full-body ventilator suit at the height of the pandemic. Other scenes include Dr. Robbie and the adult children of an elderly patient who watch him take his final breath. And another mother's crying pits in the fuss of the hospital floor, clashes near the house.

“There are moments when you feel like you're watching a shift at work,” says Rempfer, a Maryland doctor who works in the emergency room. “Sometimes I have to turn it off and wear something 'lost' or completely different. ”

Of course, not everything in the show is true to life, but about all of its efforts to authenticity. It's still on TV. The doctor said it is unlikely that even large hospitals in large cities will face such a massive amount of complex trauma in a single shift. And some of the cases and interventions depicted will take much longer to resolve in reality.

Frequent criticisms concern the depiction of chest compressions. This appears much more violent in real life than a “pit.”

“No one will make them right,” Pendergrast said.

However, the most common response was one of gratitude. For many, seeing everything the characters endure on the show, it alleviated the pain they didn't even know they had.

“Like many doctors, I've been through all of these scenarios myself, but I've never really stopped thinking, 'What the heck did I go through?'” said Walker of San Francisco. emergency room. “Hopefully this show can help us all become a little kind to ourselves.”