FOX’s new medical drama ‘The Resident’ seeks to skewer the for-profit underbelly of the American healthcare system. But to hear it from real-life residents, its message is obscured by the unintentionally ridiculous situations it presents. In the opening scene of the pilot of The Resident, Chief of Surgery Randolph Bell (Bruce Greenwood) performs an appendectomy with the aid of (fictional) Chastain Park Memorial Hospital residents and nurses. Throughout the routine procedure, the team listens to music and takes selfies in the O.R. (The former, per real-life residents, is commonplace; the latter would never, ever happen.) Then, disaster strikes. Bell’s health is deteriorating as he nears the end of an extremely successful career, causing him to suffer frequent hand tremors. During the surgery, he nicks an artery, and all hell breaks loose as the patient bleeds out on the table. My husband, Lucas, is a first-year pediatrics resident in Chicago. As we watched the show, he progressed through reactions I’m not entirely sure the show’s creators, Amy Holden Jones, Haley Schore and Roshan Sethi, anticipated. Lucas’ initial bemusement quickly turned to disbelief. “That’s not how any of this works!” he yelled at the television. “THAT’S NOT HOW ANY OF THIS WORKS!” You have to hand it to Jones, Schore and Sethi for trying to approach one of television’s most venerable offerings, the medical drama, from a fresh perspective. And The Resident is certainly a product of our post-ACA times. Other titans of the genre, including but not limited to ER, Grey’s Anatomy and, more recently, Chicago Med, hinge on the idea that the characters are fundamentally good people who got into the healthcare business to save lives. But The Resident is interested in the business, period. “I’ve billed over 35 million dollars in the last 14 months,” Bell, who is so famous his face is plastered on city buses, brags at one point. The show centers on third-year resident Conrad Hawkins (Matt Czuchry). Conrad is a disruptor (you know because he rides a bicycle to work dangerously), and his M.O. is taking first-year interns under his wing and drilling everything they learned in med school out of them. He’s a Millennial Dr. Gregory House. Harvard medical school graduate Devon Pravesh (Manish Dayal) is his latest victim. On Devon’s first day, Conrad makes him remove his tie — “You’re not at Harvard anymore” — and, later, declares, “Everything you thought you knew about medicine is wrong!” That’s at least one thing The Resident gets right; “Hardly any residents wear ties,” Lucas tells me. Another? The chaos that is sign-out. In Episode 2, “Independence Day,” Devon gets a baptism by fire in the practice of transferring patients between shifts. “That’s very real,” says Krista, a first-year pediatrics resident — though she means the pressure, not the fact that 17 residents are signing out to one intern. That’s not typical. Dan, a first-year pediatrics resident, was impressed with the almost preternatural skills Devon exhibited on his first day. (Which appeared, aggressively, to be a 24-hour shift. Who is making the schedule at Chastain Park Memorial Hospital?) “Well, on his first day of residency, Devon saved a life,” Dan says. “My first day of residency, I had to look up Tylenol dosing online.” “MY FIRST DAY OF RESIDENCY, I HAD TO LOOK UP TYLENOL DOSING ONLINE.” Later in the episode, a patient goes into cardiac arrest, which most hospitals refer to as a Code Blue. Doctors and nurses gather to start resuscitation efforts. “You’re running the code,” Conrad nonchalantly tells Devon. “I’ve never run a code!” Devon says. He fumbles in the pocket of his white coat for his handbook, which Conrad promptly smacks onto the floor. He wants Devon to act on instinct, not rules. (Disruptor!) “Who would let the intern run the code on his first day?!” Lucas says, incredulously. I ask him if he’s ever run a code. “No!” he says, laughing. He’s been an intern for nine months. The show’s requisite romantic subplot involves Conrad and whipsmart nurse Nic (Emily VanCamp). The two used to date and Conrad, still hung up on her, never misses an opportunity to try and romance her in the supply closet. Krista cried foul on that particular medical drama trope. “Hospitals are so dirty,” says Krista. “No one would do that!” The fun thing about television is that the truth is often stranger than fiction, and chances are the most far-fetched situations in a show were inspired by a real-life event someone shared in the writer’s room. For instance, in The Resident, a diabetic patient with severe necrosis of his toe is sitting up in his hospital bed eating a pizza when his toe falls clean off. “WE WENT TO OPERATE AND WE TOUCHED THE TOE AND IT FELL OFF.” “That actually happened to me in med school!” says Krista. “[The patient] was sedated in the O.R., and he had necrosis of his big toe. We went to operate and we touched the toe and it fell off.” Accurately portraying a given industry while delivering entertainment value is a delicate balance to strike — whether you’re writing a medical drama or a crime procedural. Ratings are king in the world of television, and writers tend to dial up the entertainment value while selectively omitting some realities. That hasn’t sat well with medical professionals tuning into the show, some of whom have been informally fact-checking it in real time on Twitter. Regardless of how outrageous they may find the show, however, real-life residents are still pleased to see the ins and outs of their 12-hour days depicted on network television. If nothing else, it’s something for them to direct their friends and family members to and say, This is — kind of — what my life is like. Source
