A walk on the wild side of medicine: a review of The Resident

Abstract

Over the years, the way medical dramas represent health professionals has changed. In the 1950s and 1960s when the first TV series were broadcast, health professionals were represented as good, peaceful, intelligent, competent, and successful. In recent decades, this profile has been modified to incorporate their interpersonal problems, professional blunders, and bioethical dilemmas. This new direction has recently led to an unconventional example: the medical drama The Resident (2018). This article reports a qualitative research analysis of this TV series with three points of analysis through a qualitative research approach. Its main purpose is to describe and analyze the representations of the professionals depicted in the series and their medical errors and norms violations in their daily work. The final objective is to particularize the elements that distinguish The Resident from other contemporary medical dramas and to ascertain the implications of the series? contents on the health system, health professionals, and patients. One of the categories of analysis that emerges is business-oriented management, which determines some situations of hospital care and shows that The Resident could mark a breaking point in portraying health professionals and medical care. This is worth analyzing, as the series can be useful as an adjuvant method to teach bioethics and show medical dilemmas to health sciences students.