Second-year medical student Ayaan writes about how three different medical dramas, The Resident, The Good Doctor and The Pitt reveal contrasting ideas about medicine, from institutional pressure and communication to exhaustion and uncertainty in clinical work.
Spoiler warning: This piece discusses storylines, key developments and character arcs from The Resident, The Good Doctor and The Pitt.
The strange thing about starting medical school is not that it makes medical dramas less enjoyable, but that it changes the way they feel while you are watching them. I did not expect that shift to be so subtle. It is not that everything suddenly looks unrealistic or wrong, but that certain scenes now pause in your mind for a second longer than they used to. A set of observations that do not quite line up. A diagnosis delivered a little too cleanly. A decision made without the uncertainty you now know should probably be there.
At first, I assumed this would make the shows less enjoyable, almost as if the illusion had been permanently broken. In some ways, it has changed things, but not in the way I expected. Instead of losing interest, I found myself paying closer attention, sometimes more than I meant to. These shows now sit somewhere between entertainment and something closer to informal clinical exposure: part storytelling, part revision, and part quiet self-testing. You recognise something just before it is explained, feel briefly pleased with yourself, and then immediately realise how incomplete that recognition still is.
That shift has made watching medical dramas more engaging, but also more unstable in a way I did not anticipate. There are moments where things click into place quickly, where a diagnosis or management step feels familiar enough that I almost trust my own judgement in real time. Then, almost immediately, that certainty fades as more information is revealed and I realise I was only partially right. Watching becomes less about passively following a story and more about watching my own understanding fluctuate alongside it. It feels slightly uncomfortable at times, but also strangely useful, like a low-stakes version of clinical uncertainty where nothing is final until the show decides it is.
I have focused on three medical dramas that approach medicine from distinctly different perspectives: The Resident, The Good Doctor and The Pitt. What makes them interesting side by side is not just that they are set in hospitals, but that they seem to isolate different versions of what medicine means. One is built around systems and power, one around communication and identity, and one around the lived pressure of clinical work as it unfolds moment by moment.
The Resident: medicine inside a system
The Resident is less interested in medicine as isolated clinical decision-making and more interested in everything surrounding those decisions. It keeps pulling attention back to the environment itself: hierarchy, reputation, financial pressure, institutional control, and the quiet ways these forces shape what is allowed to happen in patient care. I did not notice this immediately. At first, it felt like another hospital drama with high-stakes surgery, urgent diagnoses and confident doctors moving quickly through impossible situations. But over time, what stood out more was not the cases themselves, but the sense that outcomes were often shaped before the patient even reached the operating room.
That tension becomes clearest through Randolph Bell’s early storyline. His arc is not only about clinical fallibility, particularly the emergence of his tremor and the impact it has on his surgical performance, but also about how institutions respond when concerns emerge within established hierarchies. This is especially visible when a procedure under his care results in a catastrophic operating room fire. While the incident is managed as an acute clinical emergency, its wider significance lies in what it reveals about control, risk and authority under pressure.
At several points, concerns about Bell’s competence are filtered through reputation and seniority rather than addressed directly. Hesitation replaces open confrontation. The result is a system where what is visible and what is actionable are not always aligned, and where institutional response can be shaped as much by status as by clinical urgency. For a medical student, that is unsettling but important to watch. We are taught that safe practice depends on escalation, discussion and shared accountability. The Resident often exaggerates the lack of supervision for dramatic effect, but it uses that exaggeration to expose something real: hierarchy can shape whether concerns are heard, delayed or dismissed.
Conrad Hawkins functions as a counterbalance to this. He repeatedly challenges decisions shaped by institutional pressure rather than patient need, especially when administrative or reputational concerns begin to override clinical judgement. He is not presented as consistently correct, and his level of independence is clearly heightened for television, but his role exposes a structural tension between professional responsibility and institutional compliance. He represents the uncomfortable question the show keeps returning to: what does it mean to advocate for patients when the system around you makes that difficult?
The wider clinical workforce reinforces this system-level perspective. Nurses, reception staff and administrators are not simply background figures but active participants in care. Reception staff manage the emotional first contact with patients and families. Nurses provide continuity, recognise deterioration and advocate when something feels wrong. Administrative teams shape what treatments are practically possible within systemic constraints. This matters because it makes the hospital feel less like a stage for doctors and more like a living system, where care depends on multiple people noticing, responding and communicating.
Nic Nevin’s storyline involving Lily Kendall is one of the clearest examples. Nic persistently escalates concerns about Lily’s deteriorating condition, advocating for intervention even when her concerns are dismissed or delayed by senior staff. Following Lily’s death, the narrative shifts into questions of responsibility, interpretation and documentation, showing how clinical outcomes can be reframed through institutional processes rather than remaining purely medical events. What makes this storyline effective is that it shows advocacy as both emotional and professional. Nic is not simply attached to Lily; she is clinically attentive, morally alert and willing to push against a hierarchy that does not immediately listen.
Across these arcs, emotional continuity becomes as important as clinical resolution. Patients do not simply disappear once the case ends. Their outcomes shape the people who cared for them, and the consequences extend beyond individual episodes. The Resident is dramatic and sometimes exaggerated, but its central idea is valuable: medicine is never just diagnosis and treatment. It is also systems, power, advocacy and accountability.
The danger in the show is not always the disease itself. Sometimes, it is the system the disease exists within.
The Good Doctor: communication, difference and mentorship
The Good Doctor shifts attention away from institutional systems and focuses instead on communication, identity and how clinical competence is recognised within professional environments. It follows Dr Shaun Murphy, an autistic surgical resident with savant syndrome, whose diagnostic ability is often exceptional but whose communication style frequently places him outside conventional expectations of professionalism. This creates a recurring tension between clinical correctness and institutional recognition.
One of the most distinctive elements of the show is its attempt to make clinical reasoning visible. Shaun’s diagnostic sequences externalise pattern recognition, memory and associative thinking, almost turning thought into something architectural. I remember initially finding this striking because it removes some of the ambiguity that usually exists in medical reasoning on screen. In several cases, he identifies complex conditions or surgical complications earlier than his colleagues, sometimes from small details that others have dismissed entirely. What stood out to me was not just that he was right, but how often being right does not immediately resolve anything in the room around him. There is still hesitation, disagreement or reinterpretation, even after the clinical answer is technically available.
This creates a recurring narrative rhythm where Shaun identifies a key detail, encounters resistance and is eventually proven correct. At first, this can feel predictable, and at times the show does become repetitive. The visual sequences are clever, but they can begin to feel overused, as if every diagnostic leap has to be translated into the same familiar language. Yet the repetition also reflects one of the show’s central tensions: a system repeatedly struggling to integrate someone whose competence does not present in a familiar way.
The more important question is how competence is interpreted when communication does not align with professional expectation. Medical school teaches knowledge, but it also teaches performance: how to structure a consultation, sound confident, build rapport, appear calm and communicate in ways that are recognisable to patients and colleagues. These skills matter deeply. But The Good Doctor asks whether there is only one acceptable way to appear competent, empathetic or safe.
Shaun can be direct, literal and socially unconventional. He does not always make colleagues or patients comfortable. But discomfort is not the same as incompetence. One of the show’s strengths is that it forces the people around him to separate communication style from clinical ability. It also raises a harder question: does medicine truly value difference, or only the kinds of difference that can be translated into familiar professional behaviour?
The mentorship Shaun receives is central to this. Dr Aaron Glassman represents long-term belief, advocacy and emotional protection. He is not simply a senior doctor who supports Shaun professionally; he is a guide, protector and, at times, a parental figure. Their relationship is not uncomplicated. Glassman believes in Shaun, but he can also become overprotective, uncertain when to step back, or too personally invested in decisions that Shaun has to make for himself. That complexity makes the mentorship feel more believable. Guidance in medicine is not only about offering support. It is also about knowing when support becomes limitation.
Dr Marcus Andrews represents a different kind of mentorship. His relationship with Shaun is less emotionally intimate, but it reflects the institutional side of training. Andrews often has to balance belief in Shaun’s ability with responsibility for patient safety, team function and professional standards. He is not always warm, but he matters because he forces Shaun to meet expectations in a demanding environment. Not all mentors guide through reassurance. Some guide through accountability.
Together, Glassman and Andrews show two different forms of support. Glassman protects potential that might otherwise be excluded. Andrews protects standards that cannot simply be ignored. Shaun needs both, and that felt important to me because medical training is never only about individual intelligence. It depends heavily on the people who teach, supervise, correct and advocate for you. Ability can easily be misunderstood, unsupported or lost without the right guidance.
At the same time, the portrayal is not perfect. Autism is broad, and no single character can represent everyone’s experience. One concern is that Shaun’s savant abilities can make neurodivergence appear more acceptable because it is paired with extraordinary talent. That is worth thinking about. People should not need to be exceptional in a cinematic way to be valued, included or taken seriously.
For me, the strongest parts of The Good Doctor are not simply when Shaun solves the case. They are the moments when the hospital has to adapt to him as much as he has to adapt to it. The show asks whether medicine can make space for different ways of thinking, communicating and caring. Even when it becomes repetitive, that question remains valuable.
Where The Resident places its characters inside a broken system and The Pitt immerses them in unrelenting pressure, The Good Doctor asks something quieter: whether medicine makes room for people who think and communicate differently, and what it costs when it does not.
The Pitt: controlled chaos and clinical pressure
The Pitt adopts a real-time structure that presents emergency medicine as continuous pressure rather than a sequence of discrete clinical cases. It follows a single shift in a Pittsburgh emergency department, with each episode moving through roughly one hour of the day. What makes this approach effective is that it removes any sense that the environment ever pauses. Even when one situation is stabilised, another is already emerging, and the emotional tone of the department never fully resets.
The lead character, Dr Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, is played by Noah Wyle, who many viewers will recognise from ER, where he played Dr John Carter. That history gives the show an interesting weight. As the newest of the three shows, having launched in 2025, some two decades after ER concluded, The Pitt also arrives in a changed television landscape, one more willing to let silence, exhaustion and ambiguity carry dramatic weight without resolving it neatly. It feels almost connected to an older tradition of emergency medicine on television, but updated for a more pressured, post-pandemic healthcare world.
What I appreciate most about The Pitt is its realism. Not because every case is necessarily perfect, but because the atmosphere feels believable. The rush, interruptions, overcrowding, background noise, emotional strain and constant switching between patients all feel carefully observed. The show does not make emergency medicine look glamorous. It makes it look exhausting, pressured, meaningful and deeply human.
The defining feature of the environment is instability. Patients arrive unpredictably, information is incomplete, and attention must shift rapidly between competing demands. Robby sits at the centre of this, but not in a way that feels controlled or detached. His role feels like constant prioritisation under conditions that never fully settle. There are moments where he is managing multiple critically unwell patients, including trauma cases requiring immediate intervention, while others continue deteriorating in the background. What stayed with me is how quickly this intensity becomes normal within the logic of the show. It is not presented as exceptional for long, but as the baseline state of the department.
This is where The Pitt feels most different from more traditional medical dramas. The drama is not only whether one patient survives. It is in triage, patient flow, escalation, teamwork, fatigue, miscommunication and delayed care. Emergency medicine is presented less as a series of heroic interventions and more as a continuously adjusting system that only functions because people are constantly compensating for each other.
The trainees make this pressure feel even more immediate. Javadi’s uncertainty is not simply about confidence in clinical knowledge, but about whether she is suited to a career that demands constant responsiveness. There is a sense of internal questioning alongside every decision she makes, as if she is still working out whether she belongs in this space at all. Santos, by contrast, often leans into action. She moves quickly in triage situations and can be effective because of that, but her speed sometimes blurs into overconfidence. I found her frustrating at times, especially when she overstepped, but that is also what made her interesting. In medicine, confidence is necessary, but without judgement it can become unsafe.
Robby’s own character sits at the centre of the show’s emotional weight. He is experienced, capable and often calm under pressure, but he is not presented as invincible. He carries trauma, exhaustion and responsibility in a way that feels restrained rather than melodramatic. The show understands that healthcare workers can be skilled, compassionate and committed while also being depleted, frustrated or struggling themselves.
Dr Langdon’s storyline fits into this wider theme. His struggles around substance use and the question of whether he can safely return to practice raise difficult issues around recovery, trust, patient safety and support for clinicians who are struggling. What makes it uncomfortable is that there are no easy answers. Compassion matters, but so does accountability. Supporting a colleague matters, but so does protecting patients.
More broadly, the series presents emergency medicine as continuous rather than episodic. The department does not reset after difficult moments. It carries forward fatigue, urgency and emotional weight, and every new patient enters an environment already in motion.
The show, however, is not without its shortcomings. Some of the supporting characters, particularly among the trainees, feel underdeveloped in the early episodes and are defined more by their function in the department than by anything that makes them feel like fully realised people. The series improves considerably as it builds momentum, but some patience is required to get there.
It is also worth noting that the real-time format, compelling as it is, occasionally works against the show: some storylines feel compressed to fit the structure rather than developing at their own pace. Compared to the longer narrative arcs that The Resident and The Good Doctor use to develop their characters over time, The Pitt demands you trust in a pace that does not always give its people the space they deserve.
Final reflection
Looking at all three shows together, what stands out most is how differently they frame the same environment. The Resident keeps pulling attention towards the system itself, especially through Bell’s surgical complications and Nic Nevin’s advocacy for Lily Kendall, highlighting how hierarchy and institutional processes shape clinical outcomes. The Good Doctor focuses more on how medicine is interpreted between people, particularly through Shaun Murphy’s diagnostic ability and the contrasting influences of Dr Glassman and Dr Andrews. The Pitt shifts everything towards experience itself, especially through Dr Robby’s sustained pressure and the trainees trying to find stability within constant motion.
For me, The Pitt stays with me the most because it feels closest to what I imagine real clinical work may feel like: not defined by rare moments of brilliance, but by continuous decision-making under constraint. Too many patients, not enough time, imperfect judgement, and still small moments of care that somehow happen in between everything else.
Medical dramas are not revision tools, and they should not replace formal teaching, but I do not think they are just entertainment either. They sit somewhere in between. They make medicine feel more tangible, not in a fully accurate way, but in a way that forces you to think about communication, uncertainty, systems and emotion alongside clinical reasoning. As a second-year student, that space still feels important, because medicine is not something that arrives all at once. It builds gradually and unevenly through repeated exposure.
Sometimes I watch these shows and recognise something I have learned. Sometimes I get things wrong and only realise later. Occasionally, I feel a small moment of confidence that probably lasts longer than it should. But more often, I am reminded that medicine is not simply about being right. It is about being careful, reflective, willing to ask questions and aware that every patient exists in a story far larger than the moment you meet them.
Final verdict: The Good Doctor is the easiest to watch, The Resident is the most effective at exposing the systems surrounding healthcare, but The Pitt is the one that stays with me most. It is detailed, chaotic, emotional and uncomfortable in a way that feels grounded rather than dramatic.
