Mainly as glorified urgent care centers.
Mostly pretty mundane stuff, interspersed with the occasional true life and death cases that scare the shit out of you.
I suppose many big inner city Emergency Rooms in Chicago, LA etc. might be more nonstop drama like the Pitt, due to all the trauma cases from MVAs, shootings etc.
Medically, I feel like the show is actually pretty accurate. My wife and I watched both seasons over about 3 nights.
The truly good ER docs I've known do tend to have that Cowboy/Fighter Pilot aura about them.

It's right up there with The Wire.

One thing that just adds to it for me, is that I was a devotee of "ER" in the 90's and 2000's, so Noah Wyle in the lead role just adds to it. It's like Dr. Carter grew up to become Dr. Robinavitch. He is a terrific central character just like he was 30 years ago, and now has two Emmys to show for it.

For those that haven't watched it yet, and even for those who have, if you watch it on HBOMax, after the credits there's a brief, 3 minutes or so "making of" documentary after each show. You have to click on the icon in the corner to tell it not to go automatically to the next show. It's well worth it. Two things you find out: Gerran Howell who plays Whitaker, is a Brit, and Katherine LaNasa who plays Nurse Evans does not talk like a Yinzer.

on everything I've learned, they do their chest compressions too quickly. I'm more than happy to suspend disbelief about shows, but I worry about that being one of the life or death first aid tasks that we all may have to do. And the reach of shows like that provide a potentially important vehicle to broadcast that kind of information. In contrast, it doesn't matter how absurd some of the portrayals of trial practice are in lawyer shows.

But I could also be totally wrong on that.

The cases are both well-built in terms of meat and potatoes accuracy and complex enough for the twists to surprise me at times. I have read some criticism and I know some of it is a stretch, but not very much of it.

I don't work in the ED for a reason, but it seems to me like what they see, what they know, and what they do (in a day) is pretty incredible. There are some Dr. Robby's leading academic ED's who can really do this and that's what put it over the top for me. I am living getting destroyed by the health system (and America) and when they pull it off and help people it reminds me that sometimes we can.

And can confirm, it's pretty damn realistic.

Kidding aside, my wife's a physician and it sure does seem to nail some aspects - it brings me back to her residency days, that's for sure.

I'm intrigued by how I devour the show like comfort food, given its subject matter. Maybe it's just plucking all those old ER strings very well (which were also intertwined with those med school / grad school days).

That said, I've not watched the Scrubs reboot, even though I very much enjoyed that show in its heyday.

Obviously the "one day" format isn't believable. But each of the cases/situations in-and-of themselves are relatively accurate.

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He says it's about as realistic as it can be.

Also it's excellent.

And I actually like Santos.

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