On Grey's Anatomy sleeping
with one's attending seems to be mandatory
Photo: ABC Television |
Surgical resident Dr George O'Malley
has a problem. The love of his life rejected him and
everyone thinks he's gay. Now a fling with nurse Olivia
has left him with a dose of syphilis. Turns out she
got it from his pal Dr Alex Karev. Next thing he knows
the Chief is ordering anyone sleeping with anyone else
in the hospital to get tested. The STI clinic's never
been busier — all thanks to him.
Just your average week, right?
Yes, if you're a doc on scrub-opera Grey's Anatomy.
Is real hospital life this torrid?
The tormented lip-lockings of young
doctors are the bread and butter of popular doctor dramas
like Grey's Anatomy and ER. Populated by characters
like Dr McDreamy and Dr McSteamy (NB: Dr McSteamy is
Dr McDreamy's ex best friend — ex because he slept
with his wife), they portray hospital life as an endless
round of snogging and agonizing about snogging, punctuated
now and then by a medical emergency.
Surely with all this smoke, there
must be some fire. The sheer intensity of a resident's
schedule must make outside relationships hard to sustain,
and in real hospitals an abundance of babelicious doctors
plus an abundance of broom closets must equal hanky
panky — or must it?
"There is some truth to it," admits
Dr Michael Myers, a professor of psychiatry at the University
of British Columbia and the author of Intimate Relationships
in Medical School. "People meet and fall in love
in the workplace. Long working hours can lead to trouble
at home, and if you don't feel understood there, and
somebody who's just been up with you for 26 hours understands
because she's getting the same hassles at home as you,
she can start to look pretty appealing. If she's as
exhausted as you are, it's just too easy to fall into
the on-call bed together."
WHAT
ABOUT ETHICS
On Grey's Anatomy the characters don't bother to hide
their office romances from their superiors. In the current
season, one of the residents, Dr Cristina Yang (played
by Canadian actress Sandra Oh), is openly living with
her boyfriend, cardiothoracic surgeon Dr Preston Burke.
Last season, central character Dr Meredith Grey was
openly having an affair with neurosurgeon Dr Derek "McDreamy"
Shepherd. No one seems to mind — in fact the chiefs
are in on the action too. Are real hospitals this, um,
mcsteamy?
Yes and no, says one female med
student finishing up at Queen's. "My girlfriends and
I always joke about which attending doctor is best-looking,"
she says with a laugh. "There are secret crushes that
go around, and you get all excited when they tell you
you did a good job. But they always seem like unattainable
romances, so when we watch Grey's Anatomy, we're always
like, 'Aah, that wouldn't happen'."
The show has drawn fire from one
medical blogger on the website Medical Madhouse. Apart
from seemingly endless medical inaccuracies, the bed-hopping
grates on the internist's nerves. "Dr Shepard wakes
up at Meredith's house with her fellow interns," he
fumes in one post. "He goes to the kitchen and eats
breakfast with them. Everything is soooo cool and mellow.
Yep, just your typical attending sleeping with intern
over at other intern's house. Yo dudes, whussssuuppp!"
Our med student agrees. "Nobody
really sleeps with their seniors like on Grey's Anatomy,"
she says.
In another post, Medical Madhouse
expands on the point for the benefit of his readers
and, he hopes, Grey's Anatomy's writers: "Interns are
continuing their streak of developing 'personal' relationships
with their favourite attending. This will surely get
them in trouble — but hey, how much fun would it
be if it didn't? ...In a hospital where interns talk
down to attendings and the medical hierarchy seems to
have been reversed, why point out ethics or other inconsequential
arguments."
In reality, notes a male med student
from UWO, residents know better. "The idea of professional
conduct is drilled into our heads over the four years
of med school," he says. And when doctors see their
colleagues dragged through the shame of a misconduct
hearing, they're reminded to at least keep their on-call
trysts to themselves.
At any rate, the real scandals
making the rounds probably wouldn't be juicy enough
to provide fodder for Hollywood — "There's a rumour
that one of the doctors I work with was married when
he started dating this other doctor he's now married
to," offers our Queen's student helpfully. It's probably
just as well. Medical Madhouse sums it up thus: "It's
a bit unrealistic, but it's network TV, so what did
you expect. The cast has great chemistry — of course,
it doesn't hurt that they're easy on the eyes too."
|
