The pandemic seen on TV: not on the news but in medical-themed series that tell the news in a more timely manner than books and films that require longer production times can do. And so from Greys’Anatomy, a The Good Doctor a New Amsterdam, Covid-19 loses the connotations of news to become a story of daily life and how the epidemic has changed us. To make an analysis of the television series that have addressed the issue was a group of Spanish researchers who published the results on Jama.
Covid-19 in ‘medical drama’
Through an online search carried out by consulting the Internet Movie Database, 5 television series were identified in which the Covid-19 theme was treated and which were broadcast in 60 episodes between November 2020 and May 2021: The Good Doctor, Grey’s Anatomy, Chicago Med, The Resident and New Amsterdam. The team of researchers carefully analyzed the 60 episodes and identified 35 in which the pandemic was developed by addressing different themes, from the fear of dying to that of going to hospital, to the appreciation of doctors. Among the topics most dealt with in the TV series also that of vaccines against Covid-19 and that of disinformation.
How the story evolves
The first two episodes of the fourth season of The Good Doctor were set in the first weeks of the outbreak in Northern California. The uncertainty of the first phase of the pandemic was told through the scene of a woman who presented to the emergency room with symptoms from Covid-19 and who was discharged with a diagnosis of flu. At the time of airing, viewers were already well aware that this was a misdiagnosis. Then, however, the register changes and the pandemic is represented as an emergency that is kept under control in The Good Doctor, Chicago Med, The Resident and New Amsterdam. The first episodes of the new season of all the ‘medical drama’ were set in the middle of the pandemic, when the Covid-19 protocols had already been implemented in hospitals and therefore also in those of the sets. The first episode of the third season of New Amsterdam opens with a moving three-minute synopsis of the pandemic, from the most difficult early stages, to the dismantling of the Covid-19 tents set up outside the hospitals to the administration of the vaccine.
The new episodes in a post-pandemic world
But even on TV at a certain point there was the desire to turn the page and hope that – at least on the screen – the Covid nightmare was over. And so, after its first two episodes, a message was included in the latest series of The Good Doctor that made it clear that the story was set in a post-pandemic world. Although the Chicago Med, The Resident and New Amsterdam narratives do not do without the pandemic, face masks are only used on rare occasions after the mid-November 2020 episodes. Patients brought to the Chicago Med ER are shown and New Amsterdam require a quick Covid-19 test, but patients are later seen in the hospital without masks.
The burn-out of doctors on TV
One of the aspects best represented in television medical dramas are the psychological effects of the pandemic on healthcare workers. In several episodes their nervous breakdown, anxiety, anger and fear are told, all conditions widely reported in the chronicles of the pandemic. In The Good Doctor, for example, head of surgery Audrey Lim experiences insomnia, reliving in nightmares the trauma of turning off mechanical ventilation while relatives greet patients through video calls. When it is told in the episodes that the pandemic is now over, the doctor continues to suffer from insomnia, trying to hide the mental impact of her experience from colleagues and friends to safeguard her career, but in the end she decides to follow the treatment for the post-traumatic stress disorder. In the Chicago Med series, a doctor consults a therapist after losing a Covid-19 patient and realizes that his symptoms stem from post-traumatic stress disorder. In Grey’s Anatomy the effect of losing patients and the importance of taking care of one’s physical and mental health is told in an exemplary way. Not only that: Chicago Med and New Amsterdam also tell the feelings of inadequacy of some professionals who blame themselves for having “missed the battle of the pandemic”.
The denunciation of the scarcity of hospital resources
Grey’s Anatomy and The Resident characters lose loved ones to Covid-19; in the latter, this painful loss is also marred by the suspicion of inadequate care due to lack of resources. Indeed, in three television series (Chicago Med, Grey’s Anatomy, The Resident), the portrayal of doctors as heroes who sacrifice their health to care for patients is also used to denounce the lack of hospital resources. In The Good Doctor, for example, Chief Lim complains about a shortage of tampons. In Chicago Med, a patient dies after extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (Ecmo) treatment is canceled because there are not enough Ecmo units available. In New Amsterdam, the shortage of medicines is overcome thanks to the mediation of the hospital directors of the city. Grey’s Anatomy shows the shortage of protective gear and the need to disinfect masks with UV light so they can be reused. It also shows the scarcity of beds and ventilators in the ICU, culminating in the tenth episode of the seventeenth season with the moral dilemma of deciding how to distribute limited resources among patients.
When the virus infects doctors
Infection of healthcare workers with SARS-CoV-2 is another common topic. The Good Doctor tells the stories of two professionals who contract Covid-19 because they don’t wear masks: one is a doctor who has a mild illness, recovers and goes back to work in the next episode; the other is a nurse who becomes seriously ill and eventually dies in the intensive care unit. The Chicago Med psychiatrist also develops a mild case of the disease while a doctor in the New Amsterdam series and two in Grey’s Anatomy develop a severe form of the disease. At first, it is asymptomatic, then neurocognitive symptoms occur and finally it improves. Particularly interesting is the case of Meredith Gray, the protagonist of Grey’s Anatomy, whose disease is present in every episode of the season. Viewers see disease course, treatment, hospitalization, caution for medical decisions, mechanical ventilation, and inclusion in an experimental clinical trial.
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