Comments on: A doctor reviews the science of "House"

By: mr_mediocre

mr_mediocre — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 18:19:00 +0000

The reason Scrubs did well with the medicine is twofold, I think. First, the writers apparently got a great deal of material from actual doctors, who enjoy the “you think that’s screwed up? This one time…” type of story as much as any sysadmin. Second, the show wasn’t built around mystery maladies, so they could make use of perfectly normal anginas and blastomas and diabetic ulcers and prostate cancers. Things that House wouldn’t turn down the volume on his soap opera for.

(Ok, now I have this mental mashup of House and Scrubs going on. I want to see Hugh Laurie sing barbershop quartet with The Blanks.)

By: MandoZink

MandoZink — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 03:03:00 +0000

I could never accept House as even remotely realistic.

By: MandoZink

MandoZink — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 03:02:00 +0000

My old girlfriend, now a PhD Microbial Geneticist, used to tell that medical doctors are really just technicians. They match symptoms to remedies. The real doctors are researchers, she asserted. Now I have to protest that assumption. My last physician did a lot of research – “Lets see, what useless test will his health plan pay for next?”

By: AnthonyC

AnthonyC — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 14:38:00 +0000

Non sequitor. It could just as easily have been a commentary about what a ridiculous fraction of a doctor’s time is taken up by arbitrary paperwork required my insurance companies. That, too, diminishes a doctor’s ability to actually spend time with patients.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 20:54:00 +0000

In the emergency room. Maybe in the ambulance if you’re already seizing.

By: marilove

marilove — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 17:49:00 +0000

Lupus? Nah, it’s never lupus (except that one time it actually was!).

I used to LOVE this show, but by the end of the 3rd season, I just couldn’t do it anymore. It was just … too much. It was too outrageous while taking itself way too seriously at the same time.

By: sadiej

sadiej — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 15:35:00 +0000

My father is a physician and hates to watch House. He can’t bear to watch such a poorly run hospital. Coincidentally, I can’t bear to watch it with him because he almost always makes the correct diagnosis within the first five minutes.

By: Paul Renault

Paul Renault — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 12:41:00 +0000

Yeah, and in the CSI-type cop shows, it’s never petechial hemorrhaging.

http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-a-petechial-hemorrhage.htm

/And in one ST:TNG episode, they flooded the nacelles with ‘deionized deuterium’….

By: Cynical

Cynical — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 12:13:00 +0000

Intravenous ethanol?? That’s actually a thing? Where do I sign up?

By: 666beast1

666beast1 — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 11:24:00 +0000

As a long term patient I find your offense comical. If the doctors I saw were any less engaged they would have been asleep.

By: koko szanel

koko szanel — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 09:14:00 +0000

>taking place on some Bizarro world where clinics have unlimited budget and
>resources, no wait times, no protocols, no multi-patient multitasking, and no
>fear of liability

sounds like every single cop show

By: Cefeida

Cefeida — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 05:19:00 +0000

And that they have sufficient clearance to operate almost every machine and lab in the hospital…is that a normal thing?

By: pjcamp

pjcamp — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 04:35:00 +0000

Linked to from the Wikipedia article for years. But it’s still a good site. I rather enjoy watching House with my stepson, the orthopedic resident.

The one thing we know its not is pheochromocytoma. It’s never pheochromocytoma. But they always suggest it is.

By: Don

Don — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 02:39:00 +0000

I get that they don’t want to clutter up the story with lots of other characters, it’s just impossible to suspend my disbelief that far. We have to believe he doesn’t trust radiologists or pathologists either, AND that his staff are proficient at everything.

By: Daneel

Daneel — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 01:24:00 +0000

IIRC the BBC series Cardiac Arrest was meant to be pretty accurate, but it got canned for not presenting a positive enough image of the NHS.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 01:10:00 +0000

Is that a Roger Corman film?

By: DrDave

DrDave — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 00:53:00 +0000

It’s the shadow of House’s cane.

By: evanplus

evanplus — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 00:52:00 +0000

There are plenty of nurses, see any scene in the clinic. House’s staff doing all of the tests is explained in-universe by House not trusting the nurses. In real life it’s because it would be boring if the main characters just sent away for tests and then did nothing for 12 hours.

By: Peter Dickson

Peter Dickson — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 00:47:00 +0000

As a scientist I always object to calling the typical practice of medicine a science. Most MDs are not doing experiments (and I’m quite ok with that). They are doing the usual things in response to the usual inputs. That is not science. It is a valuable service, which I want to be done by a skilled practitioner.

By: soapdish

soapdish — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 00:01:00 +0000

Or it could be a photoshop disaster. I’ve seen quite a few shops in my time, you know.

By: Ethical Cannibal

Ethical Cannibal — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 23:58:00 +0000

As a nurse, I have seen 10 minute appointments in some offices, and pressure from above to get docs to move ‘em out to make room for more office visit income. I temped at an office where a doc started making us check cholesterol on every patient that came in to get the additional fee. I could go on and on.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 22:38:00 +0000

It’s that she’s an intelligent, well-trained, powerful woman, and no one will take her seriously unless she wears shoes that were pulled from Bettie Page’s wardrobe.

Ah, yes. Like the Bajoran freedom fighter, fresh from the Caves of Mascara in Lipliner Province.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 22:25:00 +0000

Kind of. It’s unrelated to d mellitus, but the symptoms are similar.

By: Paul Renault

Paul Renault — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 22:24:00 +0000

It’s that she’s an intelligent, well-trained, powerful woman, and no one will take her seriously unless she wears shoes that were pulled from Bettie Page’s wardrobe.

Ditto for Alicia Florrick, who wears shoes with heels longer than her knee-to-ankle distance.

Yep, they’ve come a long way, baby…

/Seriously, grab and enlarge the photo. There’s nothing wrong with her feet.

By: twianto

twianto — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 22:19:00 +0000

That’s not what you said. You said that doctors don’t “actually spend time trying to diagnose the problems their patients have” and that doctors’ “primary objective” is billing patients.

If making money is all you care about you don’t go to (and probably won’t make it through) med school. There are easier ways to accomplish that.

By: AviSolomon

AviSolomon — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 22:14:00 +0000

The show would have done a lot better if it had stuck more closely for medical content to the Berton Roueché stories that were it’s original inspiration:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berton_Rouech%C3%A9

By: mypalmike

mypalmike — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 22:11:00 +0000

If you spend the time and resources on each patient that House does, I’ll switch to you as my PCP in a heartbeat. Even your broken sentence structure would not deter me.

By: Uthor

Uthor — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 22:11:00 +0000

I think you’ve just described every episode that featured Cutty…

By: Ashen Victor

Ashen Victor — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 22:02:00 +0000

Diabetes insipidus is when a diabetic urine doesn’t taste sweet?

By: soapdish

soapdish — Fri, 13 Apr 2012 21:58:00 +0000

What the hell is wrong with Cuddy’s foot in that picture?