"Oh, You Mean Like Grey's Anatomy!"

It's often difficult to understand the culture of medicine unless you are in the middle of it. So when I talk to non-medical friends about my life and times in medical school, they draw upon the best thing they know about what I am going through.

Watching Grey's Anatomy.

Inevitably, if a story I am telling or an experience I am describing even vaguely resembles something from the television show, I get the line that makes all med students cringe: "Oh, you mean like on Grey's!" It makes sense of course. If I talked to a person who was in a traveling circus, most of my ability to relate to their life would come from watching Dumbo as a kid.

Now any med student/intern/resident/attending can tell you medicine is very much NOT like Grey's Anatomy. It's at very least half the boobs and half the libido. Which is why my interest was piqued when ABC showed trailers for their new show "Hopkins," which was billed as the "real life Grey's Anatomy."

You can watch the first episode here. I was understandably skeptical when I cracked a beer and went to watch it, since real medicine makes for horrible TV. It's a lot of boring, mundane, and paperwork, punctuated by rare moments of shit you just can't make up. Overall, I came away pleasantly surprised with the show so far. It's refreshing to see a show that humanizes doctors and the scenarios they crafted were very real. And anything that gives the general public a better view of how ridiculous physicians' lives can be sometimes is definitely a step in the right direction.

Of course, the show is partially, by its own nature, a visual and verbal fellating of the John Hopkins institution, but the Hopkins worship wasn't too bad.

Anyways, it's a 6 part series so we'll see by the end whether the show has degenerated into ER with bad actors, but so far, so good ABC. So far, so good.