<p>House is a great show even though it does not stand up to close scrutiny (as most TV does not.) </p>
<p>CynicalBastard may be blunt but is certainly not educated. He sprinkles all of his replies with elementary grammatical errors and can't even spell the name of the medical school he claims to attend. Check his other posts for humor if nothing else.</p>
<p>So I love this show. But this week's episode features:</p>
<p>1.) The show takes forever to reach a diagnosis of chimerism, which is a phenomenon we learned about in 12th grade and should have been apparent when the kid was... well, chimeric.</p>
<p>2.) House (to remind the audience, he is trained in ID and nephrology) performing brain surgery.</p>
<p>In one episode Dr. Cameron who is NOT a neurosurgeon performed complex neuro surgery on the Dr. Forman. They seem to have great knowledge of medicine outside of their speciality. Performing operations that their specialty doesn't do. This seems very odd to me.</p>
<p>I have seen episodes of them doing heart surgery, biopsies, and diagnosing and treating diseases totally unrealted to their specalties. It is almost as if we are to believe their are experts in all fields of medicine.</p>
<p>So this be the show that people say from I was. </p>
<p>Never saw it before, ill look into it do they have it in other languages or just english. </p>
<p>Also, I always thought that biopsies could be done by doctors, liek LB's and kidney biopsies etc. They have to be done by THAT specialist?</p>
<p>and about the unrelated to speciality, i woudlnt know since i havent seen it but doctors are trained in alot of things and then go into speciality, what kinda disease would you say is unreleated to specialty, that every doctor shouldnt know about.</p>
<h2>My dad, who is a senior anesthesiologist (graduated from UPenn Med School), absolutely despises House M.D. and Grey's not because of the entertaining content but because of the way the shows portray anesthesiologists. Most of the time they are shown just giving the GA and then leaving the operating room entirely, their work having been completed. This cannot be farther than the truth. Anesthesiologists most important job is making sure the the right dosages are being used, and are admininstered properly in the right places, and also to make sure that the airways are ventilated properly. Overdoses and incorrect anesthesia treatments can be fatal, and if a patient isnt properly ventilated and monitored during the entire operation the chances of a lethal mishap occuring goes through the roof. They ALWAYS stay next to the surgeon during the entire operation. After you go through surgery, just keep in mind that more than ever, anesthesiologists make sure that you STAY ALIVE during the entire operation.</h2>
<p>Tokyo: If your father actually watches GA he'll know that the anesthesiologist ALWAYS stays in the OR while the surgeon's there. I might just be defending the show cause I'm kinda vicariously living through it...haha I'm too lame, but GA's scenes are realistic as hell. And I love both House and GA, but I won't deny that House is totally unrealistic, and yet Grey's is so believable. Never have I been in an OR, or in a hospital for that matter (is that weird?), but I just feel as if Grey's has a really accurate portrayal of medical life, one of the best medical dramas. I do love the show, so, so, so much, so I just wanted to add that bit about anesthesiologists always being present to defend it. Once an anesthesiologist had nodded off (he was drunk?) during the surgery, when one of the patient's anesthesia started to wear off. This was a big problem and he was kicked out of the OR, a temp anesthesiologist was put in place till another came in.</p>
<p>I don't mean to be rude, but if you've never spent time in an OR or hospital, how exactly do you know that the show is realistic?</p>
<p>And, also... it's not.</p>
<p>1.) Attendings would be fired for sleeping with interns. Period. Interns would be fired for getting engaged to patients. Period. Interns would be fired for sleeping with each other in a supply closet.</p>
<p>2.) The surgeons "cross" specialties very routinely. Not as ridiculously as they do in House, but routinely. Burke (CT) does trauma. Sheppard (sp?) does both spinal and brain - a small stretch, but I'm medium sure you wouldn't see such a cross at a hospital supposedly as famous as Grace.</p>
<p>3.) The ratios are all off. In a seven year program, you should have six times as many non-intern residents (Bailey) as interns, not 1/5 as shown. Furthermore, each attending will have several interns. We have a 4:1:5 ratio here, a far cry from the actual (few):6:1 ratio you'd actually see. Trust me - this one isn't nitpicky - it really, really changes the social dynamic of the experience.</p>
<p>4.) The diseases on the show are... well, ridiculous. Uncontrollable orgasms/erections? Absurdly rare, if they ever happen at all. And they do some hand-waving, make some nonsense about nerves up, cut to OR, and the patient is magically cured. Do you honestly want to tell me that the every strange disease in the book can be cured by severing a nerve here or there? And an operation on a dead person? Hello, no healing back up.</p>
<p>5.) The opening speech. "Half of you will be asked to leave"?? Doesn't happen. Isn't realistic. (And why is the residency seven years? Is the show going to take two years for lab work? That'll be fun. Are they automatically enrolled in fellowships? Or did Shonda Rimes just really want to make sure the show lasted as long as it could?)</p>
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<p>I watch the show. I like it. It's not medically realistic. Period.</p>
<p>If you must find a show that tells you about real diseases (with some exceptions), watch Scrubs. It's the closest thing on TV to medical realism. ER is a distant second. Grey's is a far distant third, followed even more distantly by House.</p>
<p>Mike, i wuz always wonder how realistic scrubs be. </p>
<p>That seems more so realistic then the other ones for sure. But compare to real medicine world of the earth how accurate be it.</p>
<p>I've never found any problems with it, but that's not to say it's realistic - only that it's not unrealistic enough that a first-month medical student doesn't understand the flaws yet.</p>
<p>Is that clear?</p>
<p>sorry didnt mean to get u mad</p>
<p><em>blinks</em></p>
<p>I'm not upset. I just wanted to make sure you understood clearly what I meant:</p>
<p>I am not claiming it is realistic. I merely mean that I haven't yet found any problems. Given my status as a first year medical student, it may well have many problems which I'm just unaware of.</p>