In every medical drama ever

1. Patient flatlines, is a goner for sure, but then totally COMES BACK FROM THE DEAD

2. "Get out of my way, I'm taking over, no way a third year should be doing this shit"

3. "CLEAR"

4. Doctor with a precriptopn drug habit

5. Doctor in love with terminal/mentally unbalanced patient

6. Situation between patient and patient's spouse mirrors doctor/attending's life in eerily familiar ways

7. Doctor works multiple shifts in a row because working at the hospital is his/her life

8. "Pulse is 150 pulse ox 78% B.P. 68 over 34!"

7a. Brilliant physician with "perfect life" has a secretly shattered marriage because of relationship with work

9. Holding it together during a crisis, crying in the storage closet

10. Fucking

10a. Frentic break/bunkroom sex

11. End-of-season gunplay

12. Doc achieves a new level of lyfe-awareness, transformed by the final whisper of a dying pt, inaudible to the audience, but uttered as the final words of the episode when the doc is asked, "so what did s/he say?"

13. Something involving a bus full of children

14. Maverick doc who isn't from around here ruffles some feathers

15. "A Delicate Situation" raises interesting bioethical questions, ripped from the headlines

16. Vehicle crashes into ER

17. Salty, combative paramedics/ambulance drivers who remain eternally unnamed

18. If you can even believe it, but a ~physician~ (who is an imperious jerk) is stricken with life-threatening illness and has difficulty adjusting to the pt role and is cured and learns something but then goes back to their old ways why becuase characters

19. A nurse is bossy all the time.

19a. And is always right. And frustrated by physician ineptitude.

20. Douchebag doctor dispatched in horrific/ironic manner, to the general indifference of everybody else

man i'm hoping more people jump in here

12a. in response, doc just smiles and makes a comment that's simultaneously evasive and illuminating without being revealing

21. Blood, just, like, everywhere

22. We spend a day with the team doing something outside the hospital and the arbitrary power gradients are upturned and then there is an emergency and newfound respect and also light hearted humor why becuase characters

23. What the---there's a monkry in this hospital!!!

oh fiddlesticks

24. The Chief isn't such a bad guy after all.

25. Wait a minute...the new Chief is a woman?

26. There definitely is no such thing as a gay cardiothoracic surgeon...or is there??

27. doctor dickhead perfectionist who comes from a family of big shot doctors and can't handle the pressure.

28. A doctor has difficulty reconciling their current life with the community of their upbringing but they do anyway because of a pt and everyone thinks a lil bit about racism and/or poverty but not too much I mean this is prime time btw fucking

29. Lets show an entire live birth

30. CLEAR

31. This doc is always cool under pressure but snaps during surgery and everyone is all what the heck but then we learn something about a hard bad thing in the past that even an icy surgeon would have feelings about

32. Wacky episode!!!!!!!

33. CLEAR

34. patient on the edge of death for nearly the entire episode makes miraculous recovery as episode ends

35. All STAT everything

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqImkDgDwHU

"precriptopn" sounds like the trade name for a placebo you give hypochondriacs just to shut them up.

36. 'let's move, people!'

37. give me 900 ccs of lidocaine and a cross-table c-spine

38 a. precocious genius 8 year old with terminal cancer ep

38 b. over the course of the episode it comes to light that the child is part alien and can read human thoughts

38 c. making him the target of an alien bounty hunter

38 d. who, upon entering the hospital, falls in love with asian doctor #2

38. "You are not gonna die on me!". >>hammers on chest with hands laced together<<. "Doc, stop . . . She's gone. I'm calling it."

xp

Alien Hybrid Or Starchild Discovered In China? 2012

39. quarantine!

40. A known murderer is etherized upon the table and it would just be so easy...

40.a murderer murdered the doctor's wife

42. despite vowing to be better than his own father, doctor is unable to get away and misses his child's ballgame/recital; cue harry chapin's 'cat's in the cradle', fade to black

43. Preposterous use of narrative economy, so that one character seems to be the only person in the hospital who can do neurosurgery or cardiothoracic surgery, or that all the internists know the full range from Pulm/Critical Care to ID to Cards. (House's version of this is to have the characters do everything from doing pathology under the microscope to heading to the OR for surgery as needed)

Seriously this is the biggest suspension of disbelief I have to do to watch medical shows now.

Also, not in medical shows per se, so I won't number it, but:

CPR always works.

^^^otm on all counts

I love that House inhabits a spaceship hospital and that his and his teams' census is like 2 pts and that btw did you know that internists do IR-type caths nbd

meanwhile my attending had to push sched 2 opiates on someone last week because the RN was in the other room and the CNA who normally does it under supervision couldn't due to the aforementioned lack of RN and he was basically lol haven't done this since I was an intern how do I shot

seriously lolling at puff puff post's alien child series. And oddly at the rest of this thread even though I watch no medical dramas at all - - I suspect you could actually improvise a lot of this list just out of TV genre conventions and guessing how they'd play out in hospital shows...

44. racist skinhead injured in an altercation on a white pride march, despite their disgust doctors treat him with the same due care and attention as they would any other patient (via hippopotamus oath)

45. The arrival of one doctor's long lost relative, who embarrasses doctor and fucks shit up in various ways for at least 2-3 episodes

46. Doctor is a dick to co-workers but inside cares deeply about patients, ESP. kids

47. Appearance of saintly, ailing patient with faint resemblance to TV stars of yore lends pastoral vibe to hectic ER (sweeps week edition)

47a. This patient is hella old

OTM what was said about House, my moms an RN and she always would go on about how ridiculous that was when we used to watch that show

48. Jarring, unforeseen medical crisis occurs while docs and family of patient are in the room - this always seems to happen right before a commercial break

49. Entire show takes place in the imagination of a small boy.

50. Crappy cafeteria/commissary food and the commenting about

51. Patients have a single diagnosis responsible for every part of how they present

52. Minimal discussion of electrolyte repletion, diet advancement, dispo planning, etc

51. "You're not a real doctor till you've killed somebody."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7yfLwMds5c

49. Entire show takes place in the imagination of a small boy.

arggh these threads always move too fast for me!

52. smoking Doctor

53. Needle prick -->welcome to the world of HIV/AIDS.

54. 38 a. precocious genius 8 year old with terminal cancer dies in female doctor/nurse's arms; when she arrives home that evening, her slob bf/husband, watching football on the couch, asks 'what's for dinner?'

"this kid's meat's still good, I guess"

#51 - SO TRUE

55. Doctors talking shit about other doctors and gossiping while treating conscious patient who can hear everything

56. "Budget cuts!"
57. Getting called before "The Board".

58. Young full-of-self doctor overlooks something significant, makes wrong call, kills patient, is wracked by guilt

59: Operating on Santa in the x-mas episode.

60. "We've figured out what's wrong, and you should be out of here pretty soon." Blood vomit.

61. patient with strange religious beliefs at odds with modern medical care

62. Beeping pager interrupting important relationship conversation/nascent romance/rekindling foreplay

63. Hot sex in the bunk room

64. "The coffee-maker's on the fritz!"

65. ultimately incorrect sarcoidosis diagnosis

66. Doctor demands unnecessary, obscure, and expensive test that is expensive and threatens life of patient. Chief says no. Doctor runs test anyway

67. IT'S NOT LUPUS!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEUaYrRRTZU

68. Doctor is telling patient bad news. Doctor is wearing glasses. Doctor takes off glasses for effect when they get to the last, most final part of the bad news. For example:

Patient: "Just give it to me straight doc."

Doc: "You have (insert type) cancer."

Patient:"I don't believe you! I'm in the prime of my life! Can't you do something!?"

(Doc takes off glasses)

Doc: "I wish I could, but it would take longer than six months, and you won't make it that long."