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| A promotional poster for Greg's Anatomy |
Television has been a very popular medium in the
American society for quite some time. Television is an essential tool where
real life situation and fantasies can be depicted in visual form. Recently, many
television producers have venture into some form of the reality genre. Shows
like “Greg’s Anatomy” and “ER” are medical television dramas that attempt to depict
the reality of hospital settings. These shows are very popular and give viewers
an intriguing insight on how people in the health profession field interact
with each other and how they deal with different situations. Although the
medical dramas are designed to represent what goes on in a hospital on a daily
basis, there is still a large amount fiction integrated in the shows. This
fictional displaying gives viewers a false representation of hospital life and
may negatively influence their perception of those individuals in the health
care profession.
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| The main characters from ER, mostly doctors and physicians |
Most
of these medical television shows place a heavy emphasis on doctors and
physicians, while neglecting to depict nurses abundantly. The are main characters are mostly physicians and they are shown as the people who go around
providing significant care to the seriously ill patients. Nurses, who are
barely even shown in the shows, are shown just standing in the background and
observing as the physicians do all the work when they’re visible. In actuality
this is not accurate. This is part of the process of making the shows more entertaining
by having the doctors, mostly men, be the hero and save many lives. Some would
say there are sexist traits that exist with some of the shows. In the reality,
nurses play a vital role in taking care of ill patients and there is larger amount
in hospitals than shown on television. How much does television representation
of hospitals affect people’s perception of health care professionals?
