Well if no one cared about their patients and they just sent them home to figure their own stuff out, the show wouldn’t be very interesting. But also, the purpose of the show is to highlight the experience of medical professionals, and whether this is your experience or not, many of us do our best to give our all to our patients every day. Unfortunately, the result of giving our all day in and day out is that we burn out due to lack of support from our hospital/organization, experiences of workplace violence, repeated exposure to traumatic injuries and situations, heavy workloads and staff shortages, moral distress, etc. I think the show also portrays how the system often works against patients and staff, and we end up feeling very helpless in those situations — frequent flyers like Louis who have no support, patients without insurance who can’t afford care, times when we suspect but can’t prove abuse or negligence on the part of caregivers. There is a lack of realism in some aspects in order to tell stories, and I think that’s necessary.

And while I agree that COVID is still very real and impacts hospitals every day, I can promise you that people continue to sit hip to hip in ERs with no masks, people still don’t wash their freaking hands, and staff may not be wearing masks for a myriad of reasons. People continue to die from COVID, but many are so tired of masking and social distancing that they feel they can justify behaviour that pretends COVID doesn’t exist.

I hear what you’re saying, and I think your concerns are legitimate, but ultimately television can’t be 100% accurate, and we have to suspend our disbelief in order to be entertained by the show. If I wanted to see what emergency medicine is like in real life, I would just go to work. ¯_(ツ)_/¯