Is Noah Wyle’s Max Series The Pitt Medically Accurate?

Medical professionals have some of the most difficult jobs in the world, and that difficulty increases infinitesimally when they’re working in emergency medicine. The new Max series “The Pitt” follows the team working in the emergency room at Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital, with each hour of the series following one real-time hour in the hospital. It’s incredibly compelling stuff with an impressive cast that features “ER” alum Noah Wyle as the head doc in the unit, Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, who must not only fight to save lives but contend with the hospital brass and teach a new crew of residents and interns how to be doctors in the most challenging of conditions. It’s phenomenal television, eschewing the high melodrama of shows like “ER” or “Gray’s Anatomy” for a more realistic look at what it’s like to work a shift in an emergency room. There’s still more than enough drama to go around, of course, as the doctors, residents, and nurses must all deal with their various personal hang-ups and problems while also trying to help their patients. 

The series has been praised by television critics for its updated take on the genre, mixing realism with heart, and it turns out that some medical professionals online feel the same way. In fact, some are even calling it the most accurate medical series of all time, like YouTuber Dr. Mike, who even joked that it was a bit “too realistic” at times. It sounds like not only is the show addictively entertaining, but it’s also as close as you’re gonna get to the real thing this side of documentary TV. 

One thing “The Pitt” doesn’t shy away from is just how understaffed many hospitals have become since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, with patients waiting for many hours in the waiting room. The whole process of visiting the ER is rather accurate from the patient’s side, as long wait times combined with packed waiting rooms can make going to the emergency room the last resort. Even a trauma center with state-of-the-art tech like the one depicted in the series faces staffing shortages. Not only is burnout in ER staff much higher than in other medical professions, but many medical professionals died in the early days of the pandemic. We see Dr. Robby’s mentor dying from COVID-19 in flashbacks, and it’s clear that the whole experience was traumatizing for him. Like many of the other doctors on the unit, however, he just keeps on trucking, focusing on his patients no matter the cost to himself. 

Getting to know the doctors, nurses, and residents of “The Pitt” is just as important as watching them figure out what to do for their patients. Their experiences help influence how they treat them, and those feel authentic as well. Whether it’s “Chucky” star Fiona Dourif‘s Dr. McKay helping a young mother dealing with addiction because she was once an addict herself or Dr. Mohan (Supriya Ganesh) understanding racial bias in medicine to help a patient with sickle cell get proper treatment, these experiences play a huge role in making “The Pitt” accurate.

The show uses a lot of complicated medical terminology and we see some of the actors performing medical techniques onscreen, and it turns out they had a two-week boot camp to learn exactly how to do those things correctly. In an interview with Us Magazine, Isa Briones, who plays Dr. Santos, explained that they were trained rather extensively:

“I have these lines but where am I looking when I’m saying the stats? A bootcamp gave us that general knowledge of who we’re talking to, what it’s about and what different things mean … We got to learn how to suture, how to intubate and how to do a pericardiocentesis — all these crazy things.”

She said that they also have a number of nurses on set at all times who play the actual nurses, which is a bit of genius in terms of keeping the show both authentic and keeping things moving quickly. It’s kind of like Christopher Nolan using real scientists to play extras in “Oppenheimer,” making the historical drama even more rooted in reality, although with “The Pitt” the nurses are probably a lot more hands-on. While some have wondered why there hasn’t been much focus on the nurses at all outside of charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa), that may be because the nurses playing extras aren’t too keen on their acting skills being judged. Even with the relative lack of nurse storylines so far, real-life nurses in the audience are raving about the show’s accuracy just as much as doctors, so it sounds like “The Pitt” is going to go down as a medical drama all-timer. 

New episodes of “The Pitt” premiere on Thursdays at 9 P.M. eastern on Max.