Grey's Anatomy Play Analysis

Imagine. You are on a hospital bed staring up at the florescent lights above. You have had spontaneous seizures for the last two months and want some real answers. Suddenly two doctors walk in. It is now your choice, who do you trust to save your life, Who do you believe is more accurate in their diagnosis? Doctor Meredith Grey from Grey’s Anatomy or Doctor Doug Ross from ER. ER is a medical TV drama that follows the everyday life of an emergency room in Chicago, Illinois. ER aired from 1994 to 2009 and is known as one of the longest running scripted TV shows. Grey’s Anatomy is also a medical TV drama, but it is based in Seattle, Washington. The show follows a group of doctors through their experiences between work and love. The main character

ER’s focal point is real medicine. Brian Lowry said it best in his article ‘Dose of Reality Goes Medically Missing’ when he stated, “Doctors only have sex or enter into romantic relationships with co-workers-unless, of course, it’s a patient (“Grey’s Anatomy”). And they weap frequently”(Lowry 13). What Lowry is talking about is that frequently Grey’s drifts away from the medical diagnosis and captivates their audience with love affairs between doctors and patients. The list of romances goes on and on from Grey’s. Some of those love affairs include Dr. Meredith Grey and Dr. Derek Shepherd (A.K.A. McDreamy) and Dr Christina Yang and Dr Preston Burke. Too often it seems that the characters care more about their love interest than their own dying patients. ER also used romance to drive up viewership, but additionally they also tried to incorporate real life scenarios and real life diagnoses. In the episode “Tell Me No Secrets”, the medical staff at County General Hospital is struck with a rape case. A case like not only gives the audience a snap back to reality, but it also shows the real life scenarios from a doctor’s

Pam Belluck quoted the medical researcher for Grey’s Anatomy in her article ‘A Made-Up Hospital That Offers Real Medicine’. Belluck stated that, “While the writers want to get the medicine right, characters and relationships are primary, said Ms. Klaviter, who does not have a medical background, but was a longtime researcher for the show’s creator, Shonda Rhimes”(Belluck). She adds later that “The first idea was “somebody being under a concrete truck while the truck was unloading,” but “when we realized no one could survive that,” it was changed to a teenager who jumps into wet cement on a dare”(Belluck). While Grey’s attempts to cut back on the likelihood that someone would end up being encased in cement, they often fall subject to unbelievable cases, such as an icicle impaling a doctor outside of the hospital or a pole impaling two people that were involved in a train wreck. ER on the other hand has evidence to back up the claims that their scenarios are likely to happen in the real world. Belluck goes further to say that “A 2002 study by the Kaiser Family Foundation found that viewers’ knowledge of emergency contraception and the human papilloma virus increased after watching episodes that mentioned those subjects; a third of them said the show helped them make health care choices”(Belluck). Some of the realistic cases that were