I have been asked by multiple people if doctors in the USA actually break into your house and snoop around like on the show House, someone asked why they do it then and I had no answer for that one.
I always took it to be a play on the name.
Doctor named House cannot solve your problem until he breaks into your House.
It’s a play on the word Holmes of course. It’s not a medical show it’s a detective show.
Why couldn’t you answer? The answer is “no”, doctors don’t do this, Why is this a problem?
I get asked this about movies featuring witchcraft a lot. (The answers: Practical Magic, pretty close until the flying around and raising the dead bits (it got the social aspect really well, how all the Circle swoop in at a moment’s notice to support their own); The Craft, surprisingly spot on, actually, for the subset of gothy teenaged girls exploring Wicca; The Wicker Man, no. Just…no.)
Like Loach said, House is based on Sherlock Holmes. My question is, why have you been asked that question several times. It seems like a very specific question to be asked multiple times. Are you an American citizen living overseas (or someone not from America that’s spent some time here). I can’t imagine anyone that’s grown up here believing they can legally do that. It’s odd that in all these years no one’s ever pressed charges. I suppose the writers don’t really have much time to fill in a give episode to go down that road.
This question does have some odd timing though. Just yesterday I ran across an old post on a random message board on some corner of the internet where someone got a call from Q.E.D. looking for help on a Mythbuster myth.
In most cases, the doctors in House would just ask permission to search and get a key from the patient. They usually have a good reason to do it. Unless they mention they’re breaking in, that would be what’s happening.
The problem is, they don’t want them hiding or cleaning anything first to make it presentable.
He did not have an answer for why they show the doctors on House breaking into homes when they do not do so in real life.
Because it’s not real?
How does he explain Darth Vader?
Ah I mean after I tell them that doctors in the USA do not do this, they then ask well why do they do it on the show then? And I have no answer for why they do it on the show if it isn’t realistic.
And yes I do live outside the US which is why I am asked.
The answer to that question is, “because if they only showed what doctors really do all day, no one would watch out of boredom.”
Seriously, most hospital doctors’ basic day consists of coffee, get messages, see patients, sit at the computer and click clicky boxes for a few hours, more coffee, flirt with the nurses, yell at the new nurse for not implementing orders that haven’t been placed yet, yell at the intern for putting in the wrong orders (which may in fact be exactly what you told him to order,) return some phone calls, more coffee.
The breaking and entering is the least of the unrealistic things about House. Doctors don’t draw blood or collect urine for labs. Doctors don’t hang their own IV medicines, or give 99% of medicines at the bedside. Doctors don’t walk with their patients down to x-ray, or hold their hands and talk deep talk while they’re having an MRI. Doctors rarely come into the hospital room after hours and sit pondering deep thoughts staring at the patient while he sleeps.
Doctors don’t continue to have a well known drug addiction and keep their medical license when they refuse treatment. Doctors don’t blow off their clinical hours week after week and keep their jobs. Doctors don’t speak loudly and publicly with disrespect to their supervisors every day and keep their jobs.
While it’s a comedy and uses obvious fantasy elements, the American television show which is pretty widely accepted as “the closest thing” to how American hospital employees do their jobs is Scrubs.
Where is this strange place that only has realistic entertainment? I have seen tv shows and movies from many parts of the world most isn’t realistic. For the most part real life isn’t interesting enough.
-
Yes, I have been asked to verify accuracy on a TV show. I even got to be on it.
-
This, of course, has nothing to do with the TV show House. My wife Pepper Mill loves the show, but it’s not at all accurate in its depiction of the Princeton, NJ area, and I’ve heard complaints about its medical accuracy, too. I don’t recall seeing a scene where he breaks into a house, but, to the best of my knowledge, none of the doctors I know do this. They have enough to keep them busy.
All the time, but about (supposedly) factual information.
When I was in radio, I used to get asked by friends and people I met if WKRP in Cincinnati or News Radio were really what it was like working at a radio station. The rock station I worked for was scarily like WKRP. The talk radio station I worked for was not so much like News Radio