The Resident is a remarkable medical series that ran on Fox for six seasons between 2018 and 2023. I learned of it only recently, when an injury put me in the hospital for a week. During that stay I was cared for by several nurses, first in the ER and then on the orthopedic floor. They had a bewildering array of titles and were intensely busy. They were also, I came to realize, running the place. This is not a criticism of the physicians who appeared at the foot of my bed every morning before dawn. They, too, were intensely busy, and while they did not linger, they were candid, empathetic, and (fortunately for me) highly skilled.
But I remember the nurses best. Especially Esther, the blonde fortysomething charge nurse whose conversation never failed to lift my spirits. During one 3 a.m. chat, I asked if she ever watched medical series like The Pitt (which I reviewed here a year ago). “Of course,” she laughed, “we all do!” When asked about the portrayal of nurses, she praised the no-nonsense charge nurse in The Pitt but commented that not enough has changed since the days when TV nurses were meek subordinates in tidy white hats.
Comments