ER elective

During my fourth year at medical school, Wednesday nights were ER party nights. Every week a group of us would gather around the television in my living room to watch the latest episode of the hit show, which is soon to enter its 11th season. We would listen with intent to the medical content of the show to see if we could guess the diagnosis before it was revealed and to poke holes in the accuracy of the medicine portrayed. It became a relaxed way to revise and reinforce some of the clinical medicine that we were learning at the same time.

I took following ER one step further when I spent my elective at the Warner Studios with the makers of ER. For eight weeks at the end of summer I lived and worked in Hollywood getting a behind the scenes look at the making of one of television's most successful medical dramas.

I wrote to one of the writer-producers on the show, Joe Sachs, who also happens to be a doctor. Perhaps he empathised with my cause, as he offered me an internship at the show. I then had to pitch this unorthodox elective to my medical school. Joe came up with the idea of looking at the impact of television on public health.