(The New Yorker) – It’s as if the show’s creators absorbed every important conversation in health care today—and somehow transfigured it into good television.

The scene is “The Pitt” in a nutshell. We see the everyday heroism of health-care workers, whose devotion to patients often comes at the expense of their own well-being, as they labor to keep a medical system from going over the brink—barely. Paradoxically, a place full of misery and pain, the emergency department, ends up feeling soothing and safe. No matter how bad things get, you can take comfort in knowing that you’re in competent hands.

What’s special about “The Pitt” isn’t that it’s medically accurate, although it is. (I even learned a few things about how to insert an emergency chest tube.) What’s special about the show is that it offers a kaleidoscopic view of how societal problems have come to pervade medicine. (Read More)