‘Why did I feel like I was just at work?’: Is HBO’s newest medical drama ‘The Pitt’ really that accurate? Experts weigh in

Tez, an ER nurse, TikToker, and former emergency medicine technician, has worked in emergency medicine for six years. She and her paramedic husband never watch any medical dramas because, as she told the Daily Dot, they’re often inaccurate and frustrating to watch. 

However, Max’s new medical drama, The Pitt, is the exception to their household rule. Tez said that in episode one, the scene opening into the emergency waiting room was one of the many aspects of healthcare the show got right. 

The first episode aired on Jan. 9, when Tez’s hospital experienced a record-breaking census due to a “really bad” cold and flu season. The CDC even marked the 24-25 flu season as “high severity,” a designation not seen since 2018. 

“Our waiting room was packed to the gills,” Tez said. “So that first episode and scene, it shows how people are like sardines, canned on top of each other in that waiting room…everyone thinks that they should be the next one to be seen.”

In emergency waiting rooms, nurses triage patients, meaning they assess patients to determine the severity of their condition and the order in which they’ll be seen. People whose conditions aren’t as extreme often wait hours before they’re seen. 

“That’s just kind of the nature of emergency medicine,” Tez said. “So that kind of struck me because I feel like that’s the first time a show really portrayed that efficiently where people were pooled in the waiting room.” 

@thepnppathway @Max did their big one 🍾 #fyp #nurse #nurselife #nursing #nursinghumor #ernurse #ernurselife #thepitt #emergency #emergencyroom #emergencymedicine ♬ original sound – tez | ER nurse 🤍

How is The Pitt so accurate?

The Pitt has a rotation of three board-certified ER doctors serving as technical advisors on set at all times. 

Guest star Tori Keeth, who plays a patient on the show, commented on Tez’s TikTok in which she encourages nursing students to watch the show for educational purposes. 

In the comments, Keeth said the onsite doctor during her episode “was so hands-on & technical about every single moment. Walking us through what this would normally look like, the protocols, & emotions we would be experiencing.”

Furthermore, Dr. Joe Sacks, a board-certified ER doctor, technical advisor, and writer on the medical drama ER, is also on the writing staff for The Pitt and is frequently on set. Many of the nurses and lab technicians on the show were actual nurses and lab techs. Ned Browser, an ER RN, MSN, plays Nurse Jesse Van Horne. 

Noah Wyle, the veteran med-drama actor playing main character Dr. Michael Robinavitch, better known as Dr. Robby, noted the difference in an interview with AP Entertainment. “We wanted to lace this show with things that are definitively stated and very clear…we wanted to have this feel like a teaching hospital where real education is taking place, not just for the students but for the viewers,” he said.

The Pitt’s aims to educate viewers

Aside from the medical accuracy of the show, it also shone a light on underrepresented social issues in medicine. For example, in episode five, a patient, exasperated from waiting hours in the ER waitroom, assaults the day-shift charge nurse, Dana Evans, played by Katherine LaNasa. 

The scene aims to shine a light on the spike in violence against healthcare workers. Tez said she’s faced a plethora of verbal abuse from patients working in emergency medicine.

“It’s pretty commonly known that nurses take the majority of the abuse because we’re the ones who are there with patients the majority of the time,” Tez said. 

Furthermore, one of the running messages in this show is the impact the COVID-19 pandemic had on healthcare workers. This is demonstrated in the main character, Dr. Robby, who has a mental breakdown in episode 13. Wyle’s character struggles to cope with the loss he experienced during the pandemic, after a mass casualty incident brings up a rush of harsh memories. 

In an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Wyle said he and the showrunners of his former show ER, R. Scott Gemmill and John Wells, didn’t want to do just another medical drama. 

“The three of us came back together only because, during COVID, we recognized there was another story to tell and that it was important to us to tell it,” Wyle said. “This is a community we care a lot about, and we believe firmly that the strength of the healthcare system is proportional to the mental health of our practitioners and the degree to which we support them, and the time is right.”

The Pitt’s impact and the public’s perception of healthcare

Another part of Wyle, Gemmil, and Wells’ motivation for creating The Pitt was the public’s increasing mistrust of healthcare and science. 

“I feel that medical expertise has been called into question in such a disgusting way in these last ten years. Expertise has become almost a pejorative,” Wyle said in his interview with AP Entertainment. 

Just 37% of Americans have a “great deal” or “quite a lot of trust” in the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, while only 33% continue to commend the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, according to USA Today. 

Although medical dramas are, for the most part, entertainment, they do tend to educate and expose audiences to the inner workings of healthcare. 

Media experts argue that these shows can positively influence the public’s perception of health care. “These shows can be incredibly valuable in offering a broad, emotionally resonant picture of the medical institution, helping foster trust in healthcare and empathy for the patient experience,” Guglielmo Pescatore, author of the essay “‘Why Medical Drama?’ An Interdisciplinary Study of Narrative Layers and Societal Impact,” told the Daily Dot.

What are the risks of medical dramas?

Although they do spread awareness, medical dramas also pose the risk for viewers to develop unrealistic expectations of healthcare and the type of treatment they may receive. 

For example, a study published in the Oxford Academic Journal determined that those who witnessed CPR firsthand were significantly more accurate when describing it than those watching it on television. Yet, only 2%-12% of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest patients in the UK survive until discharged from the hospital, emphasizing the necessity for the general public to know how to perform proper CPR. 

“In my experience, healthcare professionals often criticize this kind of distortion. They worry that overly optimistic portrayals of hospital efficiency or treatment success may create inflated expectations among patients, potentially leading to disappointment or distrust when real-life outcomes fall short,” Pescatore said. 

Medical dramas are still entertainment

Sophia Palmer, a second-year pre-med student at Howard University, told the Daily Dot that some shows can lead audiences to play their own doctors. 

“A lot of people learn certain things about self-diagnoses or other conditions through medical dramas,” she said. “And the big discernment between [shows] like The Pitt and other medical dramas is that at least what they’re learning is more accurate, and it also doesn’t cause panic.”

Pescatore’s essay notes that medical dramas often portray extreme dramatizations of “rare and complex syndromes” as opposed to more common and prevalent health issues like cardiovascular disease. 

“These shows often highlight the most visually dramatic or emotionally compelling cases—typically those with rare conditions or positive outcomes—rather than the statistically most common or deadly ones,” he said. 

In terms of taking medical dramas literally, Palmer suggests watching them for entertainment purposes instead of for educational purposes. Although The Pitt does serve to educate viewers, Palmer said it’s better to consult with your doctor. 

“Please, go to the hospital,” she begged.

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