Know the Medical World through Dramas

Korean dramas like “The Romantic Doctor” (2016), “Yong Pal” (2015), “Doctor Stranger” (2014), “Doctor Crush” (2016), “The Good Doctor” (2013) and American TV series like “Grey’s Anatomy” (2005-present), “House” (2004-2012), “Scrubs” (2001-2010), and “ER” (1994-2009) have become so popular to mainstream audiences over the years. These dramas have one thing in common. They all fall under the medical drama genre.

A medical drama is any TV show or movie that mainly focuses on the events in a hospital, ambulance, or any medical environment. The personal lives of the characters in a medical drama are also featured. Currently, the longest running medical drama in the world is the British series “Casualty,” which has been on air since 1986.

Medical dramas are becoming increasingly popular for many reasons. Patients do not only walk in with their medical problems but also with their personal issues. Any patient who walks into an emergency room or any hospital setting comes in with a story to tell which makes medical dramas more relatable to viewers.

Doctors, on the other hand, are characters whom viewers root for because they are seen as real-life superheroes. Viewers get to see doctors shine in their specializations — like neurology, cardiology, or oncology — as they confront hospital politics at the same time. The interplay between the professional lives and personal lives of medical practitioners also makes medical dramas fascinating to many viewers.

Perhaps the most exciting feature of medical dramas is the conquest of one universal human enemy: sickness. Viewers like to see doctors treat people’s illnesses and see patients triumph over their afflictions that viewers themselves may face at some point in their lives. Emergency rooms or ERs are places of particular interest because in real-life, they are off-limits except to medical teams and patients. What goes on inside the emergency room is something that fuels people’s curiosity.

The future of the medical drama genre in entertainment looks bright because the genre offers a rich resource for writers to go on with and develop. Even though the genre only offers fictionalized and sometimes overly dramatized events in medical environments, it is a good avenue for the medical world to be less unfamiliar to laypeople. It is also a good instrument to educate people about common issues about health, medicine, and science.