The Pitt is back with season two on HBO, the show, a popular real-time medical drama, slices up a single ER shift into eight one hour episodes.
Star Noah Wyle plays a burnout and somewhat jaded doctor who, together with his colleagues, cut and stitch their way through some of the most horrifying and harrowing cases that roll into his Pittsburgh trauma medical centre, all while coping with underfunding and burnout.
The Pitt is billed as hyper realistic, but how does the hype line up to reality itself. Sheridan Sun spoke with an ER worker to better understand why the show gets recognized for highlighting things that affect them in their day to day lives like burnout and shifts, with almost two-thirds of nurses experience burnout. The Sheridan Sun got the chance to speak to an ER worker, for insight into what this might actually look like not even with just nurse burnout but also issues like staffing and the mental attitudes that they may have when dealing with patients and so forth. Andrew Hudson, An ICU Nurse from Detroit who when he isn’t working shifts is podcasting away with his comedy pod episode one.
He says the show is a bit triggering.
“I can’t watch The Pitt cause its just watching the worst shifts of my life,” he said. “But I’m glad people have a show that shows how much it actually sucks to work in critical care.”
The Sun asked about what that looks like and described how the residents in the show were the ones to call “code blue,” which is a cardiac arrest. He actually says that his job as an ER nurse actually involves calling the code.
“It’s always a nurse who calls the code then the doctors run to it,” he said. “Us ICU nurses are the ones who respond to code blues with the doctors.”
Hudson shared his thoughts on the medical system and on what keeps him going day in and day out.
“Basically the American health system is inherently broken, this is a given,” he said. “We have no preventative care and many people cannot afford their treatment which includes meds, diagnostics, procedures etc. I find it very upsetting because people do not have to be as sick as they are in the richest country in history. I work in intensive care, these are the sickest people in the hospital. Most of the time I’m either trying to extend them to another day, another week, or I am trying to just keep them comfortable and alleviate their suffering as they die.”
“If I can make progress with them in one shift I feel a bit better, whether than be weaning down their sedatives and vasopressors so they might be able to extubate and get off of a ventilator, awesome. They also might be conscious and make requests to me of what would make them feel better, being comfortable and less stressed is key for healing because stress alone raises the blood sugar and suppresses the immune system, making it harder to heal altogether.”
Shows like The Pitt are useful, says Hudson, because they reveal what it’s like for frontline heathcare workers on a daily basis.
“ I got into nursing and because these are the moments where people are at their most vulnerable,” he said. “We see them naked, we see them vomit, bleed, we wipe them when they have an accident. They all deserve to be cared for with their dignity intact. It is the worst place on earth to be and they need to be reminded in the chaos of it all that they are humans.”
To end this off on if the realism portrayed is truly recognized as something genuine, during the television awards last year, Noah Wyle won for best leading actor, with the creator of the show himself taking the time during his speech to thank and dedicate it to healthcare workers, stating “respect them, protect them, trust them.”
Leave a Reply