Feeling angry and frustrating while watching House M.D

[tennisball80]

When I watch that show, I feel angry and frustrating because I don't know what exactly is going on inside human body. 🙁 I go on internet and try find why the disease and what's exactly happening inside body but I don't understand the terms and the concepts.

Anyone has this experience?

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[RoadRunner17]

That is why you go to medical school. Besides, half the medicine on there isn't realistic..

 

[PeepshowJohnny]

Dude, the writers of House have no idea what's going on in the human body (especially after the first season).

 

[efitzpat]

Its a freaking TV show - not a lecture. Sit back and enjoy

 

[DOquestions]

When I watch that show, I feel angry and frustrating because I don't know what exactly is going on inside human body. 🙁 I go on internet and try find why the disease and what's exactly happening inside body but I don't understand the terms and the concepts.

Anyone has this experience?

Dude, you are in high school. When I was in high school I didn't even know how to say DNA when spelled out. Now I have a B.S. degree in biology.

 

[Dr Simplicity]

My dad - a doctor - sat down with me in our family room while i was watching House MD and after 1 minute of watching said "What's this nonsense!? This is not medicine. Turn on CNN"

 

[Dr Simplicity]

...

 

[NotAndrew]

When I watch that show, I feel angry and frustrating because I don't know what exactly is going on inside human body. 🙁 I go on internet and try find why the disease and what's exactly happening inside body but I don't understand the terms and the concepts.

Anyone has this experience?

No.

 

[chemnerd89]

My dad - a doctor - sat down with me in our family room while i was watching House MD and after 1 minute of watching said "What's this nonsense!? This is not medicine. Turn on CNN"

My dad has a similar reaction every time it comes on. He often swears.

 

[andrewnwi]

A lot of my friends who are now in M1 and M2 have fun with this show. We'll all watch it cause its funny and stuff, but when something comes up they'll catch and be like "What the fock, that is not how it is done!" My one friend who lost it one day, "When the fock did that Australian guy have time to do med school, residency, and all his subspecialties...the guy is sawing House's skull open one minute, and then going to surgery, then back the ICU!...:checks online: It says online his character is around his 30s..Are you kidding me!"

Sadly, we have to remind him it is a TV show.

 

[mtnman12]

I just hope I still like these shows after years of 80 hour weeks!! It's my favorite thing to do 🙁

 

[BlueElmo]

The urologist I am shadowing told me today to quit watching that nonsense.

 

[BlueElmo]

When I watch that show, I feel angry and frustrating because I don't know what exactly is going on inside human body. 🙁 I go on internet and try find why the disease and what's exactly happening inside body but I don't understand the terms and the concepts.

Anyone has this experience?

dude, you need to like, relax.

 

[starfishprime]

I just hope I still like these shows after years of 80 hour weeks!! It's my favorite thing to do 🙁

Odds are it'll be off-the-air by then.

 

[binko]

I get frustrated and angry while watching House because not only is the medicine unrealistic, so are the interpersonal relationships, administrative practices, and likelihood of someone coding while getting an MRI (seriously, an MRI is essentially a death sentence in House-land)

 

[chemnerd89]

Odds are it'll be off-the-air by then.

If they keep firing the fellowship docs every 2-3 years, it could stay interesting. And they could lose the "you _____ because you are miserable" lines. It gets excessive.

 

[circulus vitios]

At what point does one understand a significant amount of medical terminology? Is medical school all learning about medical lingo, names of illnesses, treatments of illnesses, and so on? Or is it picked up as you go during residency?

 

[andrewnwi]

At what point does one understand a significant amount of medical terminology? Is medical school all learning about medical lingo, names of illnesses, treatments of illnesses, and so on? Or is it picked up as you go during residency?

You pick it up from when you are a kid until you are dead. When did you first hear about headaches, then the flu, then strep throat, and so on and so on. I know you mean "big" medical terms, but really you pick up that stuff earlier than you think and just continue to build on it.

 

[Vonsmack]

At what point does one understand a significant amount of medical terminology? Is medical school all learning about medical lingo, names of illnesses, treatments of illnesses, and so on? Or is it picked up as you go during residency?

I've been a big fan of House since the beginning. The main reason is because House is hilarious and I love the character. The medicine is very weak but you can tell they try. Yes, the characters carry out every procedure because that adds to the drama-its fiction deal with it. As a pre-med I tried to follow along the medical mystery and it was fun but I didn't understand too much. After 2nd year of med school you will understand all the med lingo used on the show, and you will really see holes in the medicine used. Again, doesn't bother me too much-if I wanted to watch realistic medicine I would shadow the OR.

 

[PepperMD]

At what point does one understand a significant amount of medical terminology? Is medical school all learning about medical lingo, names of illnesses, treatments of illnesses, and so on? Or is it picked up as you go during residency?

You pick up A LOT during the first 2 years. I remember I had to dissect on the first day of med school and the weekend before I was going over Grant's Dissector (the book you use) and it would literally take like 5-10 minutes to get through a paragraph because of all the weird new ways you can describe the location of something (medial, lateral, rostral, caudal, proximal, distal, etc), let alone the actually anatomical terms. By the end of the semester it was smooth as silk and now I look back and it seems silly that I ever DIDN'T understand how to describe that "x is posterolateral to the distal insertion of y".

You learn it quick because you'll drown if you don't. It's really rather effective.

 

[45408]

At what point does one understand a significant amount of medical terminology? Is medical school all learning about medical lingo, names of illnesses, treatments of illnesses, and so on? Or is it picked up as you go during residency?

You learn a ton of it in your first two years, and then you learn even more as an M3. By that point, you'll have the gist of most lingo (except a specialized field). A big part of your rotations is just learning how to talk the talk and learn what the different specialties are even supposed to do. It makes cross-communication a lot easier.

 

[Kaustikos]

I've been a big fan of House since the beginning. The main reason is because House is hilarious and I love the character. The medicine is very weak but you can tell they try. Yes, the characters carry out every procedure because that adds to the drama-its fiction deal with it. As a pre-med I tried to follow along the medical mystery and it was fun but I didn't understand too much. After 2nd year of med school you will understand all the med lingo used on the show, and you will really see holes in the medicine used. Again, doesn't bother me too much-if I wanted to watch realistic medicine I would shadow the OR.

Agreed.

That and the relationship between House and Wilson is great

 

[deleted202457]

if you don't already understand what's going on you're destined to be a failure...

seriously, its a show, i just watch it and enjoy house's extreme sarcasm. you can't help but laugh at it

 

[Depakote]

Here's one of my favorite blogs:

http://www.politedissent.com/house_pd.html

He's an MD who does reviews of the House episodes and nit-picks the medicine in each episode, and the drama.

Don't worry about what you don't know yet, esp in high school. Just enjoy picking up on the things you do get.

 

[DrWookie]

My dad has a similar reaction every time it comes on. He often swears.

You two have really serious fathers...my dad (a physician) loves to watch ER/Grey's Anatomy/House because it's funny. There is no reason to get worked up over the shows.

I think twice, maybe 3 times, I've said a disease or a test to do BEFORE house (or his pawns) have said it...I was pretty proud of myself 😀

I don't think I ended up being right in any of the situations though because it is never the most obvious thing on that show...it is always the disease with only 100 cases in the world or something silly like that.

 

[HoloDoc]

Prime-time television does not get more formulaic than House. While the writers try to make it less like the soap-operaish Grey's Anatomy and ER by showing the team as if they are "medical detectives" putting together differentials behind the dry-erase board all day, the shows' patients' symptoms always follow relatively the same progression: patient collapses or comes in with some kind of cardiac event, next thing you know their bowel is perforated or they are bleeding out of every possible bodily orifice, next Foreman is proposing that the patient has microtumors in the brain, there is a code in the MRI (ubiquitous for this show), and finally, at the end of every epsiode, while House is harassing Cuddy or Wilson or some other character, he comes up with a "why didn't I see that before" diagnosis and all of a sudden the patient is quickly treated and sent packing (after the last five minutes of the show's philosophizing takes place).

 

[Depakote]

Prime-time television does not get more formulaic than House. While the writers try to make it less like the soap-operaish Grey's Anatomy and ER by showing the team as if they are "medical detectives" putting together differentials behind the dry-erase board all day, the shows' patients' symptoms always follow relatively the same progression: patient collapses or comes in with some kind of cardiac event, next thing you know their bowel is perforated or they are bleeding out of every possible bodily orifice, next Foreman is proposing that the patient has microtumors in the brain, there is a code in the MRI (ubiquitous for this show), and finally, at the end of every epsiode, while House is harassing Cuddy or Wilson or some other character, he comes up with a "why didn't I see that before" diagnosis and all of a sudden the patient is quickly treated and sent packing (after the last five minutes of the show's philosophizing takes place).

 

[engineeredout]

When I watch that show, I feel angry and frustrating because I don't know what exactly is going on inside human body. 🙁 I go on internet and try find why the disease and what's exactly happening inside body but I don't understand the terms and the concepts.

Anyone has this experience?

Dude you shouldn't be watching house until you've passed Step II at least. Turn on PBS and watch the colorful puppets warning you about molestation.

 

[Knitress]

When I watch that show, I feel angry and frustrating because I don't know what exactly is going on inside human body. 🙁 I go on internet and try find why the disease and what's exactly happening inside body but I don't understand the terms and the concepts.

Anyone has this experience?

This is a blog that reviews and explains the medicine used (or misused) in each episode.

http://www.politedissent.com/house_pd.html

 

[s1lver]

Watch Scrubs instead. You always know what The Todd is thinking...

 

[J1515]

I always love when people feel the need to pick out the "mistakes" in these shows. Apparently it makes them feel good about themselves because they're oh-so-smart. In fact, these people should just skip medical school altogether and start practicing medicine right now. Geez, it's a tv show meant to entertain the public. Who cares if a neurologist is performing a colon biopsy. Just watch and enjoy it. Otherwise don't watch and stop b*tching.

 

[engineeredout]

I always love when people feel the need to pick out the "mistakes" in these shows. Apparently it makes them feel good about themselves because they're oh-so-smart. In fact, these people should just skip medical school altogether and start practicing medicine right now. Geez, it's a tv show meant to entertain the public. Who cares if a neurologist is performing a colon biopsy. Just watch and enjoy it. Otherwise don't watch and stop b*tching.

Agreed. Someone once showed me a site of seinfeld bloopers and I'm thinking ARE YOU KIDDING? Nobody is trying to pass these shows off for reality.

OMFG IN SEASON 3 EPISODE 12 GEORGE SAID HE WAS 32 BUT IN SEASON 8 EPISODE 4 HE SAID HE WAS 36 BUT FIVE YEARS NOT FOUR HAVE GONE BY SO HE SHOULD BE 37 OMFG OMFG OMFG INCONSISTANCY!!

 

[howelljolly]

Scrubs is the most realistic of the medical shows... definitely....

The learning curve in medical school is astronomical. So you'll have heard of everything they discuss on House at some point in your first two years.

The basic formula that they use to make things seem like a far-off diagnosis is that they simply do the 'best initial test' or the 'most sensitive test' for the correct disease last.

Of course House and other shows are not realistic. If they made a realistic medical show, nobody would watch it. Even 'reality' shows on Discovery Health and TLC are not realistic. It takes them three weeks of filming (and fancy editing) to get one 45 minute episode of "Paramedics" or "Trauma: Life in the ER". Thats not what its really like.

Why doctors would watch any of those shows and then whine about how its not realistic is beyond me. Just zip it and enjoy the show... or watch something else... or go back to work if thats so exciting.

 

[binko]

All you need to know to understand House is that Lupus is an autoimmune disease.

 

[DOquestions]

Sports is the best reality TV. It always will be and always has been.

 

[littlealex]

Dude, the writers of House have no idea what's going on in the human body (especially after the first season).

You realize their medical advisors are Beth Isreal faculty and a UCLA internist faculty?

They know it doesn't make sense, it just makes for better drama.

 

[DOquestions]

You realize their medical advisors are Beth Isreal faculty and a UCLA internist faculty?

They know it doesn't make sense, it just makes for better drama.

I use to watch these medical shows. I would rather watch another fake show like Bones. I like watching the new boarders show.

The mere fact that I have time to watch weeknight TV tells me I'm not doing my best to achieve my dreams. Time to get out of this habit.

 

[howelljolly]

You realize their medical advisors are Beth Isreal faculty and a UCLA internist faculty?

They know it doesn't make sense, it just makes for better drama.

Yup. Lots of physicians work as technical consultants for the show. Harry Liker, Lisa Sanders, John Sotos, Michael Giordano.....

 

[Superman78]

House is one of the most entertaining shows on TV and this is one of the most depressing threads on this forum.

House is basically a comedy. Don't doctors (or future doctors) laugh? If everything in the show was accurate the show would have been canceled by the first episode, because if you want to watch real medicine in action just slam your head against a concrete wall and go to the real ER and sit in the waiting room watching Sanjay Gupta on CNN Health for a couple hours repeating the same damn story about the dangers of deep frying turkeys.

And a lot of the stuff on the show IS accurate, because they do have doctors consulting and writing for the show. They just take a lot of wild liberties to make it more entertaining. Besides, the main point of the show is to watch House berate other people with that wicked sense of humor he has, and if you don't find that enjoyable then I don't want to know you. That's what TV is for - we get to live vicariously off of these characters. I would never treat people the way House does, which makes it more fun to watch him do it.