The must-watch TV show that doctors are obsessing over

It’s a rare kind of TV show that gets rave reviews on LinkedIn. Since its premiere in January, The Pitt has become a massive talking point not just with TV critics and fans of medical dramas but with healthcare workers who are uncommonly invested in what they’re seeing on screen.

The show, set in real-time over a 15-hour shift in a Pittsburgh emergency department, has been praised by many in the medical community for its accuracy. That goes not just for the medicine on screen (though that really is notable, with emergency room doctor/ER producer Joe Sachs on the writing team, and practising doctors training actors on set) but also the types of characters, their relationships to each other and their patients, and, crucially, the trauma they hold.

The series is unflinching in its depiction of the human suffering they deal with daily (parents of young children will struggle with one episode in particular), as well as issues such as violence from patients and post-COVID PTSD.

“I’m finding myself getting quite emotional watching the show [and] many other emergency physicians are reporting the same,” one US doctor wrote on the professional networking site early in the season.

Katherine LaNasa plays charge nurse Dana Evans in The Pitt. Credit: Max

“I’m tearing up not because I’m sad, but because I think it’s somehow allowing me to grieve. For 17 years, I’ve cared for patients in the ER, and only a handful of times have I allowed myself to feel what these characters are feeling, despite having gone through the exact same situations.”

The same is happening with younger professionals on TikTok. One video, in which an American ER nurse (breaking her rule to never watch medical shows) gives the series a huge endorsement, has more than 6 million views.

Australian ER nurse Ellie Peach has also been sharing content about the show, ranking the characters by how much she’d enjoy working with them. The load-bearing attending physician, Dr Michael Rabinovitch (Noah Wyle)? 9.5/10. The overconfident intern, Dr Trinity Santos (Isa Briones)? -10,000/10.

This hyper-focus on the series has also resulted in its first piece of significant criticism: labour and delivery nurses have some notes about the remarkably graphic scene in last week’s episode depicting an obstetric emergency. A case of shoulder dystocia, they say, would have been treated a lot faster. But the fact there is any TikTok discourse over the treatment timelines for something called shoulder dystocia at all is testament to the standard the show has set.

This is far from the first time that doctors have obsessed over a medical show. In the ’90s, medical students spoke about watching ER as “revision”, trying to diagnose patients or spot errors the TV doctors made. Created by the late Michael Crichton, who graduated from medical school but never practised as a doctor, the iconic series deepened audiences’ understanding of the healthcare system and is widely understood as setting the benchmark for medical shows for years to come.

As The New York Times wrote when the last episode aired, ER was “one of the first hospital dramas to take its medicine seriously as the engine rather than the backdrop for its scripts”.

In the 2000s, Scrubs became the industry darling. Though the Zach Braff-led show was driven by its humour, doctors often praised its depiction of what life was really like inside a hospital. That show also had real doctors at its heart: creator Bill Lawrence based the series on his college friend Jonathan Doris (a real-life “JD”!), who become a medical adviser on the show.

The cast of ER, including Noah Wyle (far right). Credit: AP

Despite also portraying a group of wide-eyed medical students trying to learn on the job, The Pitt is definitely more ER than Scrubs. It focuses exclusively on emergency medicine, it also stars the iconic Wyle (who earned five Emmy nominations as Dr John Carter on ER).

In fact, these similarities – along with failed negotiations the creative team had about rebooting ER – have landed the show in legal trouble with the estate of Michael Crichton. His widow is presently suing The Pitt’s creators and production company Warner Bros Discovery, claiming the show is an unauthorised reboot.

There’s definitely a throwback energy to The Pitt. With an epic 15 episodes in its first season (a huge feat in a streaming era where you usually get just six to 10), there’s enough time to fully invest with each member of the ensemble cast and an impressive breadth of patient storylines to pull at the heartstrings. That’s the bread and butter of old network shows such as ER, House and Grey’s Anatomy.

Not quite the same vibe as Scrubs (barring that one heartbreaking episode with Brendan Fraser).Credit: Warrick Page/MAX

But, unlike those shows, The Pitt isn’t committed to a rigid procedural format where patients are squared away before the credits roll. Mirroring the true nature of an emergency room – and remembering the entire season covers just one day – we witness the most harrowing moment of someone’s life before they disappear entirely, and significant developments with staff catch you by surprise, emerging dramatically from the swirling chaos.

“Where ER was a very patient-centric show, this is a practitioner-centric show,” Wyle recently told Rolling Stone. “Everything reverts back to the toll that it takes on physicians attending to all of these worst days simultaneously.”

There’s something very fresh about that. And it’s particularly timely now, when so many healthcare workers are in crisis – feeling burnt out, bullied and undervalued in a world rife with disinformation. The show can occasionally be too didactic on these issues, with characters reciting stats and grand statements like they’re delivering a TED talk. But that shouldn’t stop you jumping in. If you haven’t watched yet, it’s an incredible (and incredibly harrowing) binge.

The Pitt streams each Friday on Binge. The season finale airs on April 11. ER is now streaming on ABC iview.

What do you think of The Pitt? Tell us in the comments below.

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