The title says it all. Thanks.
I never watch medical shows anymore. If they reflected reality, there was no need. If they didn’t, it only aggravated me.
I am not a doctor, and I don’t play one on TV, but I can link to one!
I’ve seen that show about half a dozen times and the plot is always identical. Person has weird symptoms, the smarties can’t figure it out until they realize that someone has lied about something, the lie is the clue that helps them figure out the disease, the patient lives. Am I missing something?
I don’t watch medical dramas either…but I do love “Scrubs”!
You might be interested in this blog which reviews some of the episodes from a medical POV:
http://www.politedissent.com/house_pd.html
I don’t watch House for the intriguing plot lines, I watch it for Hugh Laurie.
(Though the writers have shown that they can actually veer from the formula. And in doing so made the best episode to date. “Three Stories” I think it was called.)
My mom’s a doctor, and we come from a medical family. We both really like it with the realization that the House reality is nothing like our own.
-Lil
Is that the one with the old guy with a limp that bullies the students about. If so it bears about as much relation to real medicine as the number seven and the color green; that is, sometimes you see a 7 written in green, but you don’t attach too much signifigance to the event.
Larry
It is pretty formulaic, but in the same way that murder mysteries or whodunnits are. We pretty much know that House will figure it out five minutes from the end, but it enthralls us up to that point. And yes, Hugh Laurie is a god among comic actors. You can watch the show for the laughs as much as the medical mystery, in my opinion.
To somewhat answer the OP, I was a Registered Medical Laboratory Technologist in a former life, and the show’s lab stuff makes me pause the tape and tell my husband how wrong they’re doing it at least once a show - I mean, two days later and they haven’t done a blood smear yet? You visit a hospital for too long and you’ll get a blood smear done on you. And the doctors doing all their own tests? Really? They have no lab/x-ray/mri/ultrasound techs at that hospital? It doesn’t stop me from watching, though - who doesn’t enjoy feeling a little superior once in a while? 
You’re not alone.
Yarr. Plus it’s fun to annoy my sister by pointing out what wouldn’t happen.
I work in a medical lab as well, and the few times I’ve watched the show, I had the same reaction. I nearly choked with laughter when the doctors went down to the lab to “run some gels.” Our medical directors come into the lab just long enough for us to point and say “sign here”. And they only do that much because we’re a molecular lab and there are laws.
If you want an extremely picky comment, I can say that I was impressed that they (A) had an authentic-looking LightCycler in the lab (a machine for doing real-time PCR) and (B) the computer next to it was displaying a screen from the real LightCycler software. However, the actor playing the doctor screwed the scene up. She was typing, but the monitor was showing a screen that only accepts input from the mouse. FOOL!
That goes beyond medical into standard computer fallacy mode. When’s the last time you saw someone do anything other than type madly on a keyboard to do anything in a tv show or movie?
Yeah, the ones with two hackers trying to fight over the net are the best. Typing away frantically, never making so much as a single typo, and it all revolving on just how fast they can type different passwords or something.
Those are definitely “conscious suspension of disbelief” moments, when actors do pretty much anything on a computer. Two keystrokes, and I have the security requirements for the Pentagon and the Kremlin! Ta-da! I can’t even get on The Dope in two keystrokes (it takes me three mouseclicks. ) “Smallville” is absolutely one of the worst shows for this. Cub reporter (and she did this from her school paper, too) gets CTU-level information as easily as we Google. Mmm-hmm.
I wouldn’t be suprised if it was the real deal. I watched some half-assed “making of” thing about NCIS on the TV guide channel or something while looking at the schedule, and they mentioned that things like TVs, computers, etc… are just props, but the lab equipment was real. I think the reason being is that prop companies don’t make prop lab equipment because there is a low demand for it. So the producers probably buy used real equipment. I also know from working as a biomedical tech for a couple years that the actual patient equipment they use is accurate as well. I can easily spot brands and models of defibs, monitors, and infusion pumps. Those damn B Braun Horizon pumps are EVERYWHERE. Both in the real world and on TV. (Though my guess is that they are real, bit have had something done internally to render them non-functional. Something as simple as disconnecting a couple wires would make it still able to appear functional, but not be able to do anything.)
Fun fact - Brian Singer, the executive producer of House MD, graduated from my high school. This one. The school district should include the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Medical Complex Thingie where the show is set.