If You Must Be Hospitalized, Television Is Not the Place: Diagnoses, Survival Rates and Demographic Characteristics of Patients in TV Hospital Dramas

Abstract

This study maps the distribution of diagnoses, survival rates, and demographic profiles of patients in primetime hospital dramas and compares the results with actual hospital data. Complete seasons of ER, Chicago Hope, and Grey's Anatomy are content analyzed and compared with a survey of U.S. hospitals. Compared to real-world patients, hospital patients on television have a lower representation of Hispanics, senior citizens, infants, and women; and a higher representation of White, middle-aged men. The medical diagnoses of TV patients are biased toward dramatic diseases such as mood disorders and medical problems that are graphic and easily visible. The mortality rate among TV patients is nearly nine times higher than that of hospital patients in the real world. The results are discussed from the perspectives of media system dependency theory and cultivation theory.

Keywords:

• Content Analysis
• Cultivation Theory
• Hospital Drama
• Media System Dependency Theory
• Medical Diagnosis
• Survival Rate
• Television

I thank Naz Kameli, my research assistant at Ariel University Center, for formatting the figure and table; and Wendy Samter, Editor of Communication Research Reports, for very helpful editorial ideas.

Notes

Scrubs (taking place at a teaching hospital and broadcast on NBC from 2001–2008) was not included in the study because the comic tone of this program may impair the realistic nature of medical diagnoses. House M.D. (taking place at a teaching hospital in Princeton–Plainsboro, New Jersey, and broadcast on FOX since 2004) was excluded from the study because the series deals specifically with cases that have been misdiagnosed, resists cases that do not interest the chief doctor, and concentrates on rare diseases that form “a conglomeration of all the worst things that can happen to people from all over the world” (Holtz, 2006, p. 145). Medical series, where the main location is a walk-in clinic, were not studied because the diagnosis of non-hospitalized patients can have a preponderance of less-than-lethal diseases.

Obviously, the coders did not examine the TV patients in person, nor did they attempt to independently diagnose the characters. They were only requested to identify the diagnosis that fits best the symptoms and dialogues that appear throughout the episode.

The publication of Van den Bulck (2002) is relatively recent, but it does not include content analysis of medical dramas—old or new. Its survey data date back to an earlier decade.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Amir Hetsroni

Amir Hetsroni (PhD, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1999) is a senior lecturer in the School of Communication at Ariel University Center, Israel.