The overachievers on the hit TV show Grey's Anatomy
stand on the shoulders of M.D.s from decades of medical dramas. But health journalist Holtz finds more than a kernel of truth in the ABC white-coat soaper and notes, “[O]ur attitudes and beliefs about surgery and medicine shift and adapt unconsciously” while we take in the fiction from Seattle Grace Hospital. What unfolds in the book is a Cliff's Notes for surgical residents: the grueling hours—a max of 80 a week; the weird operating flukes—a flame bizarrely ignites from the gas in a surgery patient's gut; the need to give good care even to bad people. The anecdotes, however, seem as likely to come from Grey's
as from real life. On the struggle in treating ailing criminals, one resident confides, “I don't feel like my care was compromised by being aware that he was a criminal, but it definitely made me think about it.” There's little new in these tales from the sick ward, but Holtz gives them all a Hollywood glow. (Jan.)
