My dissertation is an examination of the role that medicine and media play in educating the American public. The research as a whole looks at four lines of media evidence including medical fictional and non-fictional television, pharmaceutical advertising, and internet health searches (also called cyberchondria). My page 99 sits squarely in the historical review of medical television, looking at the portrayal of physicians and medicine from shows in the 1960s like Ben Casey to the current spate of shows on the air now like the long running Grey’s Anatomy and House M.D.  Page 99 discussed the role of graphic medicine and realism that, while not unique to ER, was popularized by the show and it also demonstrates how physician writers cannibalize medical experiences of their own and those of colleagues around them.

[ER] thrived on intensity for the audience. The pacing was fast and the camera shots unique. In an Emmy Award winning episode of ER in the first season, titled “Love’s Labor Lost” a pregnant woman is featured having complications in the emergency room and an ER doc having to perform a caesarian section in haste. Of course chaos ensues and it is a very graphic, fast episode that was based on a real experience of a physician friend of one of the writers. (99)

Within my dissertation research, I want to stress the importance of the amount of access that I was able to obtain within medical television industry personnel. I spoke to actors, directors, executive producers, writers, physician writers and consultants, nurse advisors and consultants, product placement coordinators who organized medical equipment for set, special effects creators, and they all gave me some incredible insight into their world and also the changes in medical television over the last 50 years. The information from these key informants show the ways that physicians and nurses create the authentic medicine that is seen on screen.  They strive for accuracy as much as possible, knowing that audiences are paying attention to the jargon, the procedures, and the medical lessons of early detection, treatments, and life saving medications.

Jessica Bodoh-Creed, “When Pfizer Met McDreamy: A Classic American Love Story Between Medicine and the Media.” PhD diss, University of California, Riverside, 2013.

Dissertation available here: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/6mx5b84b

Jessica Bodoh-Creed, Adjunct Faculty, California State University, Los Angeles, Department of Anthropology. Jbodohc2@calstatela.edu