Last week, fans of The Pitt were forced to come to terms with the fact that yet another season has come to a close.
Season two of the hit medical drama saw a massive increase in viewership, with around 50 per cent more people tuning in each week.
The show has been hailed as one of the most accurate representations of healthcare work ever seen on screens, so we decided to get to the bottom of whether this is really true, or if it’s just a marketing ploy.
We spoke to two Aussie healthcare workers to get to the bottom of things: Ellie Peach, an emergency room nurse, and Emily Frank, a paramedic.
For those who haven’t seen The Pitt, it’s a new concept from ER writer R. Scott Gemmill. It centres around an emergency room (ER) in Pittsburgh, USA, and each episode covers one hour of a shift, with each season telling the story of just one day at the hospital.
“The show gives a good insight into the hourly chaos of the ER. I’ve never watched a show properly capture this,” Peach tells nine.com.au.
While many have theorised that the sheer chaos and number of patients flooding the ER in The Pitt can’t be realistic, Peach assures that the representation is “genuinely what it’s like” to work in emergency healthcare.
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“A million things will happen – your emotions and critical thinking are wild firing, and by the time you go to sit down to chart, you’re onto the next patient,” she says.
Frank says the pace of her job is a little slower. Working rurally as a paramedic, she can be doing a single transfer for up to three hours, but when she arrives at the hospital, she admits that it’s always busy, but maybe not quite as busy as fans of The Pitt might expect.
She explains that the cases covered are “medically factual”; from what she’s seen, it’s rare that an emergency department will see as many serious cases in such a short time frame.
In terms of the medical jargon thrown around seamlessly by the show’s stars, both Peach and Frank admit that they’re quite impressed by the way the writers have captured not only the natural lingo but also the relationship between co-workers.
“Compared to other dramas where there appears to be just a single person in charge coming to all conclusions and making decisions unilaterally, The Pitt shows that every person in the room has a voice and the importance of teamwork to ensure good patient outcomes,” Frank explains.
“The casual conversation between co-workers is also quite natural. The dark humour and the bonds that are made in high-pressure situations have been portrayed really well.”
Peach adds that learning to know when to go from serious to playful is a “genuine skill we have to learn to stay afloat”.
“It’s all about the little moments that keep us going,” she says.
One of the biggest issues that comes along with medical dramas is the glamorisation of the industry. But if anything, The Pitt has veered in the other direction, with some online claiming it’s too dark and graphic.
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But healthcare workers say the depiction of the tougher elements of the job is what makes the show so accurate, in turn making it successful.
“I think the show also shows quite an accurate representation of burnout and how that affects not only healthcare workers but also their colleagues and their patients,” Frank says.
“I have seen some discourse online about how it is making the show ‘dark’ and in the same sense, miserable; however, that is the reality of the job.”
For both Frank and Peach, there’s one major element of the show that they can’t relate to, and that’s the American healthcare system.
Peach points out that seeing how they deal with elements such as ICE and mass shootings is bizarre when watching from the point of view of an Australian healthcare worker, seeing the kinds of scenarios that we rarely, if ever, encounter in Australia.
But all of this still begs one question, regardless of accuracy, why, after clocking out of a shift in healthcare, would you want to go home and watch a show about working in healthcare?
“I find it weirdly settling to watch when I come off work, maybe because it’s fictional and a bit more of ‘a game’ where I can try to guess the diagnosis,” Peach theorises.
“I like the representation and to feel seen and heard by a wider audience. It makes me feel appreciated. I hope that the general public gets a good insight into what we do!”
For Frank, medical dramas are part of what inspired her to go into healthcare in the first place, but now, she struggles to watch them – except for The Pitt.
“It almost validates your emotions and actions as a professional. I know that is a very big thing to say,” she explains.
“However, the anger of patients being able to physically and verbally abuse you with little to no consequences, or the feelings of burnout and being overworked, are very real.
“To have a show that is able to portray these feelings in a very natural setting, without over dramatising or giving characters a ‘quick fix’, is almost comforting.”
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