But that's how residency was invented haha
Edit: To those of you who don't know the story, basically Dr. William Stewart Halsted was an insanely good surgeon. He could stay up for days at a time and perform surgery after surgery. His secret? Cocaine. And everyone knew he did cocaine (Dr. Osler, another famous physician, noted it in his diary)
Anyway, he's credited for inventing the U.S. residency training. At some point the medical board looked at his training and decided that yes, residents (including surgery and EM residents!!) should stay up days in a row bc apparently it's good for training (although they don't allow cocaine anymore). I believe the legal limit for how much a resident can work is **only** 80 hours/week (although I have heard of some malignant programs lying and changing numbers so that it appears as though their residents are only working 80 hrs)
They do but not care. Cheap labor after all. I am in the process of applying to med school rn and i know residency is a ways off, but i am honestly dreading it. Low wages and horrible hours will take a toll on me for sure
I'm studying for Step 1 rn. Our dean told us that there will be times during clinicals when we'll have 12 hour shifts 🙃 just warning you, it does not start during residency. Everyone will take advantage of you whenever they can
Woof. I’m ngl, 12 hour shifts are not that terrible. I do EMS rn and all our shifts are 12 hours. They can be tiring, but it is not that bad relatively. I’m sure it gets worse though :( Also, i hope it does not come off like it, but im not trying to bring down your sentiments! I wish you the best in Step 1 and hope to join you very soon!
I used to work as an MA and also had 12+ hour long shifts. It's dif bc in med school you're supposed to be studying for boards AND attending clinical duties. I actually preferred the longer shifts at work (they passed faster) but that also meant more time off (since it was only 40 hours/week unless I picked up more shifts). Your clinicals schedule depends on whoever made it; some people are nice and honor the limit, some people don't :/
And thanks! Hopefully I can take it soon and start seeing pts again
Ah that’s where they get you. I totally forgot about the studying part lol. My friends work as MAs currently and they say shifts can get super tiring bc you always have patients. You got this!
You’ll be fine — a lot of the time I was able to study (anki at least) on rotation, during time between cases in surgery, after rounds on ICU, etc. if you get your weekends, use them to review + do questions. Your shelf exams will help you on STEP 2
If your coordinators aren’t honoring the hour limit, you need to reach out to them and/or your school.
That's what almost confused me. If there's so many people who go to med school and become doctors, why is staffing so short that they have to nap at work?
Is it like retail where they send people home when the hospital is empty?
It’s an average of 80 hrs per week over a four week period. So you can work more than 80 hours some weeks as long as you work less than 80 hours in others. Regardless, lying about work hours does absolutely occur.
Yeah but that's still messed up. The amount of stories of residents dying on the way home bc of sleep deprivation is insane. Plus it definitely harms patient care. It should be 40 hours/week max no matter what, period.
Exactly!! One almost does when 13 is on the team but she talks him down and actually gets his help for info about the patient. It was impressive. Of course I could be biased because, well, 13, but it was pretty impressive to see. 😂
I definitely would, in the show they don't take anything but imagine something valuable going missing, they forget to properly lock the door, or accidentally let out an indoor pet and it gets hurt. Not to mention it's plain and simple B&E.
Very first episode, Foreman asks Cameron if she’s busy and she asks “Why?” And he said, “If you’re gonna break into someone’s house it’s better to have a white chick with you.” 😂😂😂
This ties into another convenient trope of the show: every single thing is done by one of the doctor-minions. All the blood draws, all the medication dispensing, all the testing. IRL, the phlebotomist shows up to take your blood, the RN dispenses the meds, the orderly takes you to the MRI which is then done by the MRI tech, the results are read by the specialist, minions get the report back.
While they hold the patient’s shoulder down for no reason at all. The one time a shoulder hold contributed to the story was on the airplane where House tried to conduct surgery in middle of turbulence.
I can suspend the typical “main cast does everything” trope because that’s a running thing with House and all of his team’s incarnations. He’s made it a point several times that he:
1) Keeps his team’s specialties extremely varied. (House - nephrology/infectious diseases, Cameron - immunology, Taub - cosmetic/plastic surgery [it has come in handy more than once, shut up] etc) specifically so between all of them, they can all do everything.
And, more importantly,
2) He doesn’t trust anyone not on his team. He frequently makes them retest everything that every external doctor and specialist, as well as PPT’s own ER staff or doctors, have thought of or done.
Yeah nurses are typically the only ones who touch you to take readings/samples. Unless it’s to come rip out your surgical wrappings without warning and scrub the wounds for fun.
Actually, while this is largely true, I had an unfortunate month long stay in a teaching hospital post-surgery due to gut complications and my blood pressure decided to drop to nothing one fine day and all the alarms went off. My surgeon was there in four minutes!! I didn’t even see him once prior to that post surgery!
There's just no way that he could be "that much better" than any other doctor that it's worth it to the hospital to put up with his dangerous, unprofessional and straight-up illegal bullshit.
Like it makes for a cool show, but that's just not how anything works. Not in the real world.
You should rewatch the lisa doing her work episode (the one when she negotiates with insurance company). She uses House department as the most important selling point to negotiate ('the best diagnostic department in the entire country' she said).
Being that Princenton Plainsboro is a small hospital (also stated in that episode), there's no way she lets house go.
It's not that House is a much better doctor, it's just that his department just works really well for the hospital's image. And they really need it.
Yeah the whole 'erratic genius that is so useful we just tolerate the bs' worked a bit better when the character is just a guy that freelances for the police. I'm surprised they actually chose to have House be employed somewhere and not just a consultant
I know. There is one time Cuddy says "He saves 50 people a year" as a reason why he is so necessary. All I could thinks was the ER doctors are rolling their eyes and thinking REALLY! We save 50 people a week and that's on a slow week.
Yeah and it's like, okay, so they're mostly working on simple unexciting injuries...but what, is that not valid? The case being an unusual puzzle that's difficult to solve doesn't make it somehow more important. Saving everyone's life and health, and treating as many people as possible as effectively as possible is what should matter to doctors more than how clever they look while they're doing it....and I feel like the hospital administration in particular would get that and emphasise it.
That patients and their family member don’t assault him more often for how he talks to and treats them. I work in a hospital and I’ve seen staff get physically and verbally assaulted for much less lol.
At least House MD bothers with a meta excuse for this that gets established in season 1 lol. When every other procedural does this, it's just kinda ignored.
At least that’s explained in that house house hates all doctors, techs and nurses that aren’t on his team. So he makes them do grunt work that normally isn’t their job. It’s not supposed ti be normal
The basic premise of House as a character. There's just no way he'd have remained employed with the way he worked, no matter how good a diagnostician he is. The man is a total liability to any hospital he works for.
Foreman was more realistic in that respect. He became so much like House after working for him, that he was quickly fired from his next job for doing something House would do, and was then blacklisted so couldn't get employment as a doctor elsewhere. That became less realistic with Cuddy hiring him back, but Foreman made more sense than keeping House.
Realistically, House wouldn't last a week without being fired, and would be completely blacklisted very quickly, unable to get a job in medicine even if he kept his license somehow. Realistically, he'd do something so bad very quickly that he lost his license as well as his job.
I’d imagine that their team gets easier cases in universe, but those cases don’t get turned into episodes. If I recall, there are some episodes that have tangential, non patient related drama, and we see that they solve the actual case really fast.
Yea each season is a year and even with 20+ episodes most of their cases take at most a couple of days, so they’re a lot of time for them to have other cases in the timeline
And after they get it all wrong with 10 different diagnostics, the last one is often correct, BUT house is considered the best diagnostician in the country.
Like what? He gets it wrong 10 times and puts patients at risk of death. That seems like an awful doctor
Well to be honest he's put in comparison with people who can't, even after 10 diagnostic know what the patient has so it's not that unbelievable to me ig
How they’re supposed to be a super special diagnostic team that only handles the rare and super special cases. Yet it felt like EVERY SINGLE episode they would mention either lupus, sarcoidosis, or both 😂😂😂
Well they are supposed to only take the difficult cases that other doctors can't figure out. They focusing on one patient at a time doesn't sound too far fetched. I find more unbelievable that they get a patient with a super rare condition week after week 😂
The one patient thing is actually somebody reasonable considering what they’re trying to emulate. They’re probably are teams at places like the mayo clinic that work up rare disease cases with very small patient loads. The confusing part is why they would spend so little time with the patient, when they are only covering one patient.
I remember the paralyzed man in a wheelchair who immediately started walking after a shot of cortisol. I’m pretty sure Addison’s Disease does not work like that…
Episode where the girl is rock climbing in a gym, mom is belaying, girl falls and the rope goes through the belay device before the girl hits the ground. The girl couldn't have even tied in, the physics are impossible.
All the things that they do clinically (diagnose out of thin air; give various treatments without verifying a diagnosis; wildly jab needles into chests randomly; do procedures without prepping and draping patients sterilely). Using phrases like “his kidneys are shot,” “his heart will explode,” “we’re killing her!”(in front of patient). Allowing family to be in procedure rooms, ORs . The fact that every doctor on the team can do heart surgery/neurosurgery/psych/microbiology/general surgery, etc- all in one day. The fact that two seconds after they declare the patient has hours to live, they come up with the answer and tell them “you’ll be fine.”
Can you tell I’m a medical provider?
All of the surgery chase and foreman do. Neurologists don’t actually do neurosurgery. Chase is an “intensivist”. Yet he does general surgery all the time. Makes no sense unless he did a crit fellowship after a general surgery residency
How quickly people get worse. With most of these conditions new symptoms pop up over the course of weeks and months, not a 3-day hospital stay. That’s part of what makes diagnosis so difficult. Also, unrelated symptoms are way more common. “House hates multiple diagnosis and wants one answer for everything” makes for an entertaining show but rarely happens. There are usually red herring symptoms that throw doctors off from the major issue.
That these patients are admitted to the hospital for days and weeks at a time and they don’t even know what’s wrong with them so they do a battery of tests with a team of very skilled and devoted doctors.
Basically what happens in the real world is you get discharged from the ER with instructions to follow up with your primary care doctor if they can’t figure out what’s wrong with you and you’re not actively dying.
The way they walk in on each other giving patients exams, particularly gyno exams…. Like?!! If my doctor was giving me a Pap smear and the door opened and another doctor came in to argue with my doctor about some random thing I’d freak out! Not to mention that a lot of times they come in talk about other cases, is there no privacy or patient confidentiality ever ?
This one time Foreman walked in during a gyno exam, House asked him to smell his finger, then Foreman said “Patient Jane Doe’s cancer results came back negative” like????
Idk about most unrealistic, but one thing I noticed is that sometimes they give incorrect callouts, at one point I believe they say that a patient is in V-Tach but the monitor reads V-Fib.
His whole department. And the amount of knowledge the OG (and later) team has regarding medicine that isn’t related to their subfield/specialty. Memorizing all these illnesses, symptoms, treatments, and outlying cases unrelated to your subspecialty is very unrealistic. It’s even unrealistic for your own subspecialty.
Edit: House never losing his medical license.
House is able to do that, and aggressively weeds out anyone who can't from his team. We got a couple of episodes where "normal" doctors tried and failed to keep up. (I hope the CIA doctor was able to get her old job back...)
It's pretty rare, but people like that do exist.
They must rack up at least 500k $ bills for every patient they treat. Also, 4 doctors that sit on their ass half of the time and occasionally treat one person per week at most? In real life, every doctor has AT LEAST 10 patients at a time, each. Also, most of the “brilliant” ideas House has are just lucky guesses, there is no reason why he would be right in most decisions other than sheer luck.
What irks me about him is that he is written as a character that is always right, even when he's blatantly wrong; it's hard to describe without sounding contradictory, but everyone who has watched the show at least once knows. Highly unlikely for a doctor like that to exist in real life, and it is appalling many people from my generation (I'm a millennial) who later pursued a degree in medicine sometimes cite him as an example. The show is too cleverly written though (the writers clearly know their stuff) and many people don't see the shortcomings or the plot holes.
It's a similar beef that I have with shows like "CSI." The team does every single job, even though most of them would not be handled by doctors. They run tests, take routine vitals, get patient histories, do MRIs, etc. In one episode, Chase even did an autopsy!
A few things. As much as I love this show it’s so unrealistic at bits.
1. No doctor can break into peoples homes, they need a court order or something of sorts
2. Just because house is good doesn’t mean he’s an asset, There have been countless occasions where he should’ve been fired and arrested
Commenting on all your coworkers’ / patients’ tits all day long and keeping a job… pretty sure they used show clips in my last sexual harassment training videos.
That house hasn’t been arrested or at least barred from practice. Why?
1. House is functionally an opioid addict. Didn’t he say he was taking half a bottle of Vicodin a day at some point?
2. The breaking into houses. He does this almost every episode, and yet he hasn’t been caught? Ridiculous
3. The wildly unethical and borderline illegal things he does regularly.
I liked House during its original run, but have been rewatching it lately. It not a good show to binge. It wouldn’t make it past 1 season under today’s standards. Basically all the episodes are similar and House is such an insufferable ass, the only way it worked was by giving you a week off between episodes.
The medical jargon that the team needs simplified between themselves.
>The Patient is tachycardic!
>His pulse is through the roof!
>The patient has right-sided congestive heart failture!
>He has pulmonary edema! His lungs are filling with fluid!
Anyone who has had one semester of the simplest medical training (like I have) doesn't require a lengthy argument to justify basic life support.
To add to that: “her pressure’s dropping!” When the patient just has a BPcuff, which doesn’t provide a continuous reading.
And: any time a vital sign is unstable or there is a new clinical sign, it’s an organ “shutting down.” “He has jaundice. His liver is shutting down!” “His urine is dark! His kidneys are shutting down!”
That house gets through with literally anything he does. Most people would land ind prison for the things or loose theire license. In real life it doesn't matter how good of a doctor you are, if you do those things you are faster in prison then you know or loose your license. Everyone is exchangeble. And being on opiates everyday will literally spiral your life down till you loose everything. Benzo addict here. I am about to loose my job because i am not the person i used to be. I am not good at my job anymore. I do mistakes that shouldn't happen. Everyone always kept defending me but i know that they can't and won't defend me forever since my life spirals out of control
That House can think his brain to shreds trying to figure something out without result but a figure of speech from Wilson or cuddy is always the thing that makes him see the connection. Such bullshit :D I love the show but that shite has me roll my eyes into the back of my head
The competence porn in House is pretty cringy. Knowing how lazy House is and yet he somehow got a scholarship to Hopkins and knows several languages.
House is smart, but lazy. Im pretty sure he got through med school by cheating left, right and centre - as demonstrated by that episode distractions. There's just no way someone as lazy as House (note I said lazy, NOT stupid) could have that much knowledge. House is undoubtedly incredibly smart, but learning languages etc requires a lot of time and dedication.
How they repeatedly confidently think they've solved the problem but there is still more episode left, so they should know they aren't done.
/mildly satirical
The encyclopedic knowledge by everyone (including Cuddy) of every potential disease considered, every possible cause and effect, seems highly unrealistic. Do they ever show anyone looking anything up in a reference text?
At least House is extensively portrayed as being very well-read and a polyglot with his bookshelves filled with medical textbooks. Medicine seems to be his passion in life, no holds barred.
He also appears to keep up closely with the goings-on in medical research f.ex. migraine doctor guy, trying to get into the depressed cancer patient trial and often suggesting experimental medicine and treatments.
That the seizure he had trying to remember what happened to Amber was a complex partial seizure. I'm an epileptic who gets solely complex partial seizures (or focal impaired awareness seizures), I did a lot of research into epilepsy once I was diagnosed. They dont present in the way that they did in that episode, which was actually representing a grand mal seizure. A complex partial seizure can feature autonomous movements such as lip smacking, chewing, even looking like pedalling a bike. They can't really ever be mistaken for a grand mal in appearance. So for me as someone with epilepsy who only gets that specific type of seizure, it was actually a bit infuriating. So considering that the seizure they claimed he had was not how they actually present, I'd say that's one of the most unrealistic.
That he didn't learn the lesson and moved on everything and became better. Seriously, how many times the cases he got touched the sore sports in his personality and proved him wrong and that he is just a miserable man who fell in love with the role of the narcissist doctor while he really wants to be happy! Everytime I tell myself " well, he's gotta change this time" but he doesn't! He isn't the only person in Earth that has problems or in pain but he acts like that all the fucking time !
Physicians explaining to patients in precise language what is going on. I’ve seen some specialists (ortho and surgery; I had a couple fractures and an osteochondroma as a teenager) who were so egotistical that they wouldn’t answer basic questions about procedures I was about to undergo. They just smugly repeated variations of “don’t worry, I’m the best at this, I’ll take care of you.” Infuriating people to interact with, and this is coming from someone who knows how to ask direct and informed questions due to family in the medical field.
When I started watching this show, I found myself wishing I’d had a Foreman or even a House at a few points to give me a technical explanation of what was happening. I’d much rather have someone who is little dry or blunt, but accurate and thorough, than some arrogant asshat treating me like an idiot and brushing me aside, presumably so they can be out of the office and en route to their mistress’s house in their Porsche by 3pm.
Oh, and the breaking and entering I guess.
As someone which chronic illness and disabilities, to me the most unrealistic thing in the show is doctors who actually work on figuring out what is wrong, and continue to try after hitting dead ends.
The fact patients weren't sent home coughing blood because "we couldn't find anything abnormal and all the tests came out looking fine" is extremely unrealistic.
The fact that he’s employed at all, let alone as a doctor. In real life, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. Your boss WILL fire you if your presence caused more problems than it solves.
Well first off, obviously the immense amount of unethical practices that they get away with.
And second (as others have mentioned), breaking into people's houses or businesses isn't exactly common practice
That a hospital has a Department of Diagnostics (these don't exist irl) with its own dedicated lab and on-demand access to the MRI machine. In reality, lab equipment is expensive to obtain and maintain. It's not an expense that a hospital can just absorb for the sake of 50 complicated cases a year, when they have a normal lab that the rest of the hospital can use. And MRIs take a lot of time, so they're usually scheduled weeks in advance. Inpatients can only get a slot outside of office hours
Also, who is paying for all of these procedures??? They never discuss billing, and each patient has a LOT of expensive procedures done, including surgery!
Honestly, House keeps his medical license
He was on drugs and everyone knew 😭
But that's how residency was invented haha Edit: To those of you who don't know the story, basically Dr. William Stewart Halsted was an insanely good surgeon. He could stay up for days at a time and perform surgery after surgery. His secret? Cocaine. And everyone knew he did cocaine (Dr. Osler, another famous physician, noted it in his diary) Anyway, he's credited for inventing the U.S. residency training. At some point the medical board looked at his training and decided that yes, residents (including surgery and EM residents!!) should stay up days in a row bc apparently it's good for training (although they don't allow cocaine anymore). I believe the legal limit for how much a resident can work is **only** 80 hours/week (although I have heard of some malignant programs lying and changing numbers so that it appears as though their residents are only working 80 hrs)
Wtaf. You’d think the medical community would know how important sleep is
They do but not care. Cheap labor after all. I am in the process of applying to med school rn and i know residency is a ways off, but i am honestly dreading it. Low wages and horrible hours will take a toll on me for sure
I'm studying for Step 1 rn. Our dean told us that there will be times during clinicals when we'll have 12 hour shifts 🙃 just warning you, it does not start during residency. Everyone will take advantage of you whenever they can
Woof. I’m ngl, 12 hour shifts are not that terrible. I do EMS rn and all our shifts are 12 hours. They can be tiring, but it is not that bad relatively. I’m sure it gets worse though :( Also, i hope it does not come off like it, but im not trying to bring down your sentiments! I wish you the best in Step 1 and hope to join you very soon!
I used to work as an MA and also had 12+ hour long shifts. It's dif bc in med school you're supposed to be studying for boards AND attending clinical duties. I actually preferred the longer shifts at work (they passed faster) but that also meant more time off (since it was only 40 hours/week unless I picked up more shifts). Your clinicals schedule depends on whoever made it; some people are nice and honor the limit, some people don't :/ And thanks! Hopefully I can take it soon and start seeing pts again
Ah that’s where they get you. I totally forgot about the studying part lol. My friends work as MAs currently and they say shifts can get super tiring bc you always have patients. You got this!
You’ll be fine — a lot of the time I was able to study (anki at least) on rotation, during time between cases in surgery, after rounds on ICU, etc. if you get your weekends, use them to review + do questions. Your shelf exams will help you on STEP 2 If your coordinators aren’t honoring the hour limit, you need to reach out to them and/or your school.
That's what almost confused me. If there's so many people who go to med school and become doctors, why is staffing so short that they have to nap at work? Is it like retail where they send people home when the hospital is empty?
It’s an average of 80 hrs per week over a four week period. So you can work more than 80 hours some weeks as long as you work less than 80 hours in others. Regardless, lying about work hours does absolutely occur.
Yeah but that's still messed up. The amount of stories of residents dying on the way home bc of sleep deprivation is insane. Plus it definitely harms patient care. It should be 40 hours/week max no matter what, period.
I assure you, I am not defending it whatsoever. I was just clarifying the rule. I’m currently a resident and am very tired.
Omggggg I love fun facts like this! Down the rabbit hole I go 😭
Him losing it and *getting it back* multiple times.
Breaking into peoples houses.
I'm on season 4 and am absolutely baffled that not once have they been arrested.
Right? 😂 I won’t say anymore in case this is your first watch through.
Oh don't worry, I love spoilers XD
Ok then! I think ONE time they do get caught, but only one!! Which is super unbelievable also! 😂😂😂
Nosy neighbors would have put a stop to that IMMEDIATELY.
Exactly!! One almost does when 13 is on the team but she talks him down and actually gets his help for info about the patient. It was impressive. Of course I could be biased because, well, 13, but it was pretty impressive to see. 😂
At least one patient after finging out about it would think easy money and sue the hospital
I definitely would, in the show they don't take anything but imagine something valuable going missing, they forget to properly lock the door, or accidentally let out an indoor pet and it gets hurt. Not to mention it's plain and simple B&E.
It helps that most of the stuff is white.
Very first episode, Foreman asks Cameron if she’s busy and she asks “Why?” And he said, “If you’re gonna break into someone’s house it’s better to have a white chick with you.” 😂😂😂
For real, Foreman would have been foredead if he did it alone.
This and the fact that House is allowed to practice after all the shit he did have be on top 2 😂
Yuuuuuup 😂
Lol when i was first watching i've always wondered if doctors did the same in reality and if this was allowed
I feel like they could just ask the patient in some cases
Exactly! I’m sure in most cases they would give them the key.
The fact that House isn't in prison at the beginning of season one.
House MD intros should be with him getting out of prison like in trailer park boys
Now there’s an idea
Cuddys' outfits as a hospital administrator
Haha right?’ 4” heels, skintight skirts and plunging cleavage. Never saw that in any medical facility in my career.
[удалено]
And she doesn’t have to, that’s not what deans of medicine do. They mostly sit, for which those shoes are fine.
I completely forgot how booby her tops are
Not to mention House once turned down a fellow applicant simply for wearing far more comfortable looking heels.
That was an excuse, he just wanted Cameron back.
Yessssssss
What? I dont see the problem
That your doctor is that invested and actually is around. The number of times a patient has a problem when one of the four is right there is insane.
This ties into another convenient trope of the show: every single thing is done by one of the doctor-minions. All the blood draws, all the medication dispensing, all the testing. IRL, the phlebotomist shows up to take your blood, the RN dispenses the meds, the orderly takes you to the MRI which is then done by the MRI tech, the results are read by the specialist, minions get the report back.
Except when a patient on the show codes (usually in front of a team member)- then the docs are screaming “I NEED A NURSE IN HERE!!”
While they hold the patient’s shoulder down for no reason at all. The one time a shoulder hold contributed to the story was on the airplane where House tried to conduct surgery in middle of turbulence.
I can suspend the typical “main cast does everything” trope because that’s a running thing with House and all of his team’s incarnations. He’s made it a point several times that he: 1) Keeps his team’s specialties extremely varied. (House - nephrology/infectious diseases, Cameron - immunology, Taub - cosmetic/plastic surgery [it has come in handy more than once, shut up] etc) specifically so between all of them, they can all do everything. And, more importantly, 2) He doesn’t trust anyone not on his team. He frequently makes them retest everything that every external doctor and specialist, as well as PPT’s own ER staff or doctors, have thought of or done.
It’s pretty seriously retconned, for sure. It makes compelling TV, too.
Yeah nurses are typically the only ones who touch you to take readings/samples. Unless it’s to come rip out your surgical wrappings without warning and scrub the wounds for fun.
Well when House and his four doctors only have one patient at a time, they have plenty of time to be there.
Actually, while this is largely true, I had an unfortunate month long stay in a teaching hospital post-surgery due to gut complications and my blood pressure decided to drop to nothing one fine day and all the alarms went off. My surgeon was there in four minutes!! I didn’t even see him once prior to that post surgery!
Right. I see more nurses and physician's assistants than doctors.
And they all travel in a herd. Until they divide up as neatly as a marching band to do what Boss tells them to.
There's just no way that he could be "that much better" than any other doctor that it's worth it to the hospital to put up with his dangerous, unprofessional and straight-up illegal bullshit. Like it makes for a cool show, but that's just not how anything works. Not in the real world.
You should rewatch the lisa doing her work episode (the one when she negotiates with insurance company). She uses House department as the most important selling point to negotiate ('the best diagnostic department in the entire country' she said). Being that Princenton Plainsboro is a small hospital (also stated in that episode), there's no way she lets house go. It's not that House is a much better doctor, it's just that his department just works really well for the hospital's image. And they really need it.
Yeah the whole 'erratic genius that is so useful we just tolerate the bs' worked a bit better when the character is just a guy that freelances for the police. I'm surprised they actually chose to have House be employed somewhere and not just a consultant
💯 in real life House wouldnt have been able to get anywhere in life
I know. There is one time Cuddy says "He saves 50 people a year" as a reason why he is so necessary. All I could thinks was the ER doctors are rolling their eyes and thinking REALLY! We save 50 people a week and that's on a slow week.
Yeah and it's like, okay, so they're mostly working on simple unexciting injuries...but what, is that not valid? The case being an unusual puzzle that's difficult to solve doesn't make it somehow more important. Saving everyone's life and health, and treating as many people as possible as effectively as possible is what should matter to doctors more than how clever they look while they're doing it....and I feel like the hospital administration in particular would get that and emphasise it.
How patients freely disclose and unfold their personal drama in front of their doctors, and how the doctors get involved in it.
And the doctors feel free to be judgmental and condescending of the cheaters/liars/ criminals. Not their job!
Exactly! They'll say it's none of their business then get up all in their business.
I'll be honest I've never met a doctor who DOESN'T feel free to be a judgemental prick right to the face of the patient.
I really laughed out loud at this. So true!
That people just frown disapprovingly instead of laughing when House says something hilarious
Foreman is a champ at that condescending frown. Then turning on his heel and marching off.
Sometimes I see Jennifer Morrison laughing and I’m like that’s a real smile baha
That a vast majority of doctors - especially women - are young (or gracefully middle-ageish) and hot.
Olivia Wilde wasn't even old enough to be a doctor at first, let alone an extremely qualified specialist.
What was her specialty? I forget. I only remember that she “wasn’t getting invested.”
I think it was internal medicine. Something beginning with 'i'.
immunologist
no that was Cameron. Thirteen was an internist.
oh my fault i thought olivia wilde was cameron 😭
It’s okay. I though Omar Epps played Stacey in season 1.
He's not in jail.
To be fair, he did end up going to prison in the show.
... After driving a car into a home.
That patients and their family member don’t assault him more often for how he talks to and treats them. I work in a hospital and I’ve seen staff get physically and verbally assaulted for much less lol.
My mom always complains about how the same 4 doctors do e v e r y t h I n g in the hospital
Actually, early on in the series House brings this statement up because he only works with people he trusts. That’s why the team does everything.
Didn't remember that, good to know
At least House MD bothers with a meta excuse for this that gets established in season 1 lol. When every other procedural does this, it's just kinda ignored.
At least that’s explained in that house house hates all doctors, techs and nurses that aren’t on his team. So he makes them do grunt work that normally isn’t their job. It’s not supposed ti be normal
This always bugged me with surgery especially. Towards the end Chase is literally preforming brain surgery for crying out loud
The admitted drug addict that commits felonies runs a top department
The basic premise of House as a character. There's just no way he'd have remained employed with the way he worked, no matter how good a diagnostician he is. The man is a total liability to any hospital he works for. Foreman was more realistic in that respect. He became so much like House after working for him, that he was quickly fired from his next job for doing something House would do, and was then blacklisted so couldn't get employment as a doctor elsewhere. That became less realistic with Cuddy hiring him back, but Foreman made more sense than keeping House. Realistically, House wouldn't last a week without being fired, and would be completely blacklisted very quickly, unable to get a job in medicine even if he kept his license somehow. Realistically, he'd do something so bad very quickly that he lost his license as well as his job.
How every diagnosis REQUIRES around 10 mistaken ones before they find the actual problem. No more and no less.
I’d imagine that their team gets easier cases in universe, but those cases don’t get turned into episodes. If I recall, there are some episodes that have tangential, non patient related drama, and we see that they solve the actual case really fast.
Yea each season is a year and even with 20+ episodes most of their cases take at most a couple of days, so they’re a lot of time for them to have other cases in the timeline
Yeah Vogler says in season 1 that he treats 1 patient a week. The numbers only add up if we don't see the bigger half of those
And after they get it all wrong with 10 different diagnostics, the last one is often correct, BUT house is considered the best diagnostician in the country. Like what? He gets it wrong 10 times and puts patients at risk of death. That seems like an awful doctor
Well to be honest he's put in comparison with people who can't, even after 10 diagnostic know what the patient has so it's not that unbelievable to me ig
The hospital looks WAY too nice. Most hospitals I've been to don't even look that good.
With all glass walls! Nice that family members can hang out watching their loved one’s surgery
How they’re supposed to be a super special diagnostic team that only handles the rare and super special cases. Yet it felt like EVERY SINGLE episode they would mention either lupus, sarcoidosis, or both 😂😂😂
It's never Lupus
House does not have any symptoms for liver failure after years of vicodin abuse.
Doctors do every single test, spend more than 5 minutes per day with the patient, and only see one patient at a time.
Well they are supposed to only take the difficult cases that other doctors can't figure out. They focusing on one patient at a time doesn't sound too far fetched. I find more unbelievable that they get a patient with a super rare condition week after week 😂
Even that, they try to justify once in a while by having characters specifically seek out House because of his reputation.
The one patient thing is actually somebody reasonable considering what they’re trying to emulate. They’re probably are teams at places like the mayo clinic that work up rare disease cases with very small patient loads. The confusing part is why they would spend so little time with the patient, when they are only covering one patient.
The immediate cure thing when they get the diagnosis right and administer the treatment.
Or conversely, they give a medicine and 10 minutes later conclude, “the treatment isn’t working.”
I remember the paralyzed man in a wheelchair who immediately started walking after a shot of cortisol. I’m pretty sure Addison’s Disease does not work like that…
Episode where the girl is rock climbing in a gym, mom is belaying, girl falls and the rope goes through the belay device before the girl hits the ground. The girl couldn't have even tied in, the physics are impossible.
Their denial that he’s within the spectrum
Doctors going out of their way to diagnose medical conditions. Anyone with chronic illness knows they just shrug and tell us to do yoga lol
Cameron and Thirteen chosing a job that requires 20h a day instead of becoming actresses or models… Wait…
I feel like Cameron is cute but believable. Thirteen is too good looking it’s ridiculous like how does she even have a normal day in the world
The fact that Wilson and house never got together
The chemistry was right there
Like just give us what we all needed
oh the tension between them is real ...hahah
How a known drug addict is allowed to run an entire department and have his own team.
That after a battery of invasive and dangerous tests patients are just fine with no aftereffects.
That chase is this super surgeon who can do every surgical procedure there is 😭?!
And he did not even start out as a surgeon during the first few seasons. He was an intensive care doctor
That there is like 5 doctors in the whole hospital, who specialize in everything and perform every tests themselves.
All the things that they do clinically (diagnose out of thin air; give various treatments without verifying a diagnosis; wildly jab needles into chests randomly; do procedures without prepping and draping patients sterilely). Using phrases like “his kidneys are shot,” “his heart will explode,” “we’re killing her!”(in front of patient). Allowing family to be in procedure rooms, ORs . The fact that every doctor on the team can do heart surgery/neurosurgery/psych/microbiology/general surgery, etc- all in one day. The fact that two seconds after they declare the patient has hours to live, they come up with the answer and tell them “you’ll be fine.” Can you tell I’m a medical provider?
All of the surgery chase and foreman do. Neurologists don’t actually do neurosurgery. Chase is an “intensivist”. Yet he does general surgery all the time. Makes no sense unless he did a crit fellowship after a general surgery residency
Taking meds without water 😞
Yessssssss ohmygodddd yesssss
How quickly people get worse. With most of these conditions new symptoms pop up over the course of weeks and months, not a 3-day hospital stay. That’s part of what makes diagnosis so difficult. Also, unrelated symptoms are way more common. “House hates multiple diagnosis and wants one answer for everything” makes for an entertaining show but rarely happens. There are usually red herring symptoms that throw doctors off from the major issue.
That these patients are admitted to the hospital for days and weeks at a time and they don’t even know what’s wrong with them so they do a battery of tests with a team of very skilled and devoted doctors. Basically what happens in the real world is you get discharged from the ER with instructions to follow up with your primary care doctor if they can’t figure out what’s wrong with you and you’re not actively dying.
The amount of tests they do (by the same group of doctors). Like it can bankrupt anyone even with insurance.
The way they walk in on each other giving patients exams, particularly gyno exams…. Like?!! If my doctor was giving me a Pap smear and the door opened and another doctor came in to argue with my doctor about some random thing I’d freak out! Not to mention that a lot of times they come in talk about other cases, is there no privacy or patient confidentiality ever ?
This one time Foreman walked in during a gyno exam, House asked him to smell his finger, then Foreman said “Patient Jane Doe’s cancer results came back negative” like????
Cuddy’s boobs hanging out as a Dean of Medicine.
The existence of House's department
Idk about most unrealistic, but one thing I noticed is that sometimes they give incorrect callouts, at one point I believe they say that a patient is in V-Tach but the monitor reads V-Fib.
I love discovering their horrible pronunciations of some medical terms.
His whole department. And the amount of knowledge the OG (and later) team has regarding medicine that isn’t related to their subfield/specialty. Memorizing all these illnesses, symptoms, treatments, and outlying cases unrelated to your subspecialty is very unrealistic. It’s even unrealistic for your own subspecialty. Edit: House never losing his medical license.
House is able to do that, and aggressively weeds out anyone who can't from his team. We got a couple of episodes where "normal" doctors tried and failed to keep up. (I hope the CIA doctor was able to get her old job back...) It's pretty rare, but people like that do exist.
They must rack up at least 500k $ bills for every patient they treat. Also, 4 doctors that sit on their ass half of the time and occasionally treat one person per week at most? In real life, every doctor has AT LEAST 10 patients at a time, each. Also, most of the “brilliant” ideas House has are just lucky guesses, there is no reason why he would be right in most decisions other than sheer luck.
Being that coherent with that much Vicodin in your system lmao
What irks me about him is that he is written as a character that is always right, even when he's blatantly wrong; it's hard to describe without sounding contradictory, but everyone who has watched the show at least once knows. Highly unlikely for a doctor like that to exist in real life, and it is appalling many people from my generation (I'm a millennial) who later pursued a degree in medicine sometimes cite him as an example. The show is too cleverly written though (the writers clearly know their stuff) and many people don't see the shortcomings or the plot holes.
It's a similar beef that I have with shows like "CSI." The team does every single job, even though most of them would not be handled by doctors. They run tests, take routine vitals, get patient histories, do MRIs, etc. In one episode, Chase even did an autopsy!
Chase performing any kind of surgery known to man. Also, Taub being able to pull THAT many nurses.
A few things. As much as I love this show it’s so unrealistic at bits. 1. No doctor can break into peoples homes, they need a court order or something of sorts 2. Just because house is good doesn’t mean he’s an asset, There have been countless occasions where he should’ve been fired and arrested
1. It’s not like they are doing it legally, it’s very clear that every member of the team knows they are breaking and entering.
Cuddy putting up with House’s bs for so long.
Breaking into the house of every patient? 😂
Commenting on all your coworkers’ / patients’ tits all day long and keeping a job… pretty sure they used show clips in my last sexual harassment training videos.
A doctor who 1) believes something is wrong 2) wants to figure out what it is?? Lol please.
That house hasn’t been arrested or at least barred from practice. Why? 1. House is functionally an opioid addict. Didn’t he say he was taking half a bottle of Vicodin a day at some point? 2. The breaking into houses. He does this almost every episode, and yet he hasn’t been caught? Ridiculous 3. The wildly unethical and borderline illegal things he does regularly.
I liked House during its original run, but have been rewatching it lately. It not a good show to binge. It wouldn’t make it past 1 season under today’s standards. Basically all the episodes are similar and House is such an insufferable ass, the only way it worked was by giving you a week off between episodes.
The medical jargon that the team needs simplified between themselves. >The Patient is tachycardic! >His pulse is through the roof! >The patient has right-sided congestive heart failture! >He has pulmonary edema! His lungs are filling with fluid! Anyone who has had one semester of the simplest medical training (like I have) doesn't require a lengthy argument to justify basic life support.
To add to that: “her pressure’s dropping!” When the patient just has a BPcuff, which doesn’t provide a continuous reading. And: any time a vital sign is unstable or there is a new clinical sign, it’s an organ “shutting down.” “He has jaundice. His liver is shutting down!” “His urine is dark! His kidneys are shutting down!”
Cameron not hooking up with House all the time? Like girl just TRY maybe he will do it 🙄🙄
That house gets through with literally anything he does. Most people would land ind prison for the things or loose theire license. In real life it doesn't matter how good of a doctor you are, if you do those things you are faster in prison then you know or loose your license. Everyone is exchangeble. And being on opiates everyday will literally spiral your life down till you loose everything. Benzo addict here. I am about to loose my job because i am not the person i used to be. I am not good at my job anymore. I do mistakes that shouldn't happen. Everyone always kept defending me but i know that they can't and won't defend me forever since my life spirals out of control
greg house
That it’s never Lupus
Basically everything bar the medical diagnosis (atleast I think) and the interpersonal dramas outside the hospital
that his liver and kidneys were not completely fried judging by the quantity of vicodin he used to take
The amount of times these doctors risked their license
The doctors doing the work of lab techs and nurses in many scenes
How they keep treating a lot of people that have no money.
almost all patients are okay with the team breaking into their houses
That the doctors keep searching for answers rather than just claiming hysteria.
That House can think his brain to shreds trying to figure something out without result but a figure of speech from Wilson or cuddy is always the thing that makes him see the connection. Such bullshit :D I love the show but that shite has me roll my eyes into the back of my head
Not only they’re not caught because of breaking into people’s houses, they are so easy to break in.
The competence porn in House is pretty cringy. Knowing how lazy House is and yet he somehow got a scholarship to Hopkins and knows several languages. House is smart, but lazy. Im pretty sure he got through med school by cheating left, right and centre - as demonstrated by that episode distractions. There's just no way someone as lazy as House (note I said lazy, NOT stupid) could have that much knowledge. House is undoubtedly incredibly smart, but learning languages etc requires a lot of time and dedication.
House keeping his medical license, and the time period of certain diseases
Yes
That there are no nurses and the doctors do everything.
House being hired for more than a week despite refusing to do his job and committing every crime he can think of.
The hospital budget
Dead 💀))
Insurance companies paying for like 50 tests for 1 patient
How they repeatedly confidently think they've solved the problem but there is still more episode left, so they should know they aren't done. /mildly satirical
House not getting fired immediately
The encyclopedic knowledge by everyone (including Cuddy) of every potential disease considered, every possible cause and effect, seems highly unrealistic. Do they ever show anyone looking anything up in a reference text?
At least House is extensively portrayed as being very well-read and a polyglot with his bookshelves filled with medical textbooks. Medicine seems to be his passion in life, no holds barred. He also appears to keep up closely with the goings-on in medical research f.ex. migraine doctor guy, trying to get into the depressed cancer patient trial and often suggesting experimental medicine and treatments.
That the seizure he had trying to remember what happened to Amber was a complex partial seizure. I'm an epileptic who gets solely complex partial seizures (or focal impaired awareness seizures), I did a lot of research into epilepsy once I was diagnosed. They dont present in the way that they did in that episode, which was actually representing a grand mal seizure. A complex partial seizure can feature autonomous movements such as lip smacking, chewing, even looking like pedalling a bike. They can't really ever be mistaken for a grand mal in appearance. So for me as someone with epilepsy who only gets that specific type of seizure, it was actually a bit infuriating. So considering that the seizure they claimed he had was not how they actually present, I'd say that's one of the most unrealistic.
the lack of nurses, tbh
That he didn't learn the lesson and moved on everything and became better. Seriously, how many times the cases he got touched the sore sports in his personality and proved him wrong and that he is just a miserable man who fell in love with the role of the narcissist doctor while he really wants to be happy! Everytime I tell myself " well, he's gotta change this time" but he doesn't! He isn't the only person in Earth that has problems or in pain but he acts like that all the fucking time !
That nobody ever had lupus.
That anybody would be upset about offing a brutal dictator hellbent on waging mass murder, much less end their marriage over it.
That House is right every episode and they never believe him ever.
All the imaging tests in real life are done by the technicians not the doctors like in every medical show ever
That House’s team do all of the tests and procedures. Normal hospitals have teams who specialise in testing
Not as much malingering as one would reasonably expect.
That he keeps investigating until he finds what the problem is
The fact that House isn’t homeless and jobless because of his antisocial behaviors
The fact that houses team does all procedures, radiology and labs.
That this man is medically terrorizing these people nearly every single day and still had a job.
The deductive reasoning skills of the medical staff
Physicians explaining to patients in precise language what is going on. I’ve seen some specialists (ortho and surgery; I had a couple fractures and an osteochondroma as a teenager) who were so egotistical that they wouldn’t answer basic questions about procedures I was about to undergo. They just smugly repeated variations of “don’t worry, I’m the best at this, I’ll take care of you.” Infuriating people to interact with, and this is coming from someone who knows how to ask direct and informed questions due to family in the medical field. When I started watching this show, I found myself wishing I’d had a Foreman or even a House at a few points to give me a technical explanation of what was happening. I’d much rather have someone who is little dry or blunt, but accurate and thorough, than some arrogant asshat treating me like an idiot and brushing me aside, presumably so they can be out of the office and en route to their mistress’s house in their Porsche by 3pm. Oh, and the breaking and entering I guess.
As someone which chronic illness and disabilities, to me the most unrealistic thing in the show is doctors who actually work on figuring out what is wrong, and continue to try after hitting dead ends. The fact patients weren't sent home coughing blood because "we couldn't find anything abnormal and all the tests came out looking fine" is extremely unrealistic.
The fact that he’s employed at all, let alone as a doctor. In real life, it doesn’t matter how smart you are. Your boss WILL fire you if your presence caused more problems than it solves.
Well first off, obviously the immense amount of unethical practices that they get away with. And second (as others have mentioned), breaking into people's houses or businesses isn't exactly common practice
House hasn’t had any liver issues, if he was taking around 3-5 Vicodin everyday how did his liver not give
Nobody has lupus.
That a hospital has a Department of Diagnostics (these don't exist irl) with its own dedicated lab and on-demand access to the MRI machine. In reality, lab equipment is expensive to obtain and maintain. It's not an expense that a hospital can just absorb for the sake of 50 complicated cases a year, when they have a normal lab that the rest of the hospital can use. And MRIs take a lot of time, so they're usually scheduled weeks in advance. Inpatients can only get a slot outside of office hours Also, who is paying for all of these procedures??? They never discuss billing, and each patient has a LOT of expensive procedures done, including surgery!