I am a huge fan of the show The Pitt, which I have twice posted about. I love its authenticity, both in medical treatment and emotion. That said, the last two episodes which involve a mass shooting with 80 plus critical patients strained my credibility with all the miraculous and creative saves done by the team including some by new interns on their first day. At first I really enjoyed the calm of the response and the fantastic job they did at triaging the multiple patients, but after two hours I found it too much. Now in my thirty plus years, I have never had to deal with a mass casualty response of that nature both in the number of patients and their criticality. I have done calls with fifty plus patients, many of whom were hardly injured at all, and I have done a car accident with five critically injured on scene that I had to immediately call for reinforcements. I took care of the most critical and sent others to care for the others until the cavalry in the form of more ambulances arrived. I have often been on scenes with two or three critical patients, but rarely was I alone for long. The most critical patients I ever had in my ambulance that I had to care for myself while transporting were two. I have no experience with combat medicine so I may not be the best person to judge what a large mass casualty shooting might be like at an overwhelmed hospital. That said, I still felt it was too much, bordering on ridiculousness.
Here is an interesting interview Slate magazine did with a physician who has mass casualty experience and his thoughts on the episodes, which I thought were very revealing.
What an ER Doctor Who’s Worked Multiple Mass Shootings Thinks of Those Episodes of The Pitt
The mass shooting, by the way, was telegraphed in earlier episodes as a mother revealed her troubled son had made a list of girls he might want to eliminate, and when Dr. Robby tried to talk to him, he fled the ED and had been the subject of the search. He returns at the end of episode 13, but denies he had anything to do with the shooting. I agree with him. I don’t think he did it. I eagerly await tonight’s episode 14. My fan theory is that the shooter may turn out to be the angry man who punched the triage nurse in an earlier episode because he had to wait so long in the ED waiting room.
Anyway, I hope tonight’s episode and the final episode the following week, restore my faith in what has largely been one of the greatest TV shows ever.
Jumping the shark refers to when a show loses its way and becomes dumb. The reference is to an episode of the old show Happy Days, when the cool good guy, Fonzie, jumps over a shark on water skis.