{"id":464569,"date":"2026-09-15T15:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-15T15:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/464569\/"},"modified":"2026-09-15T15:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-15T15:24:09","slug":"emmy-winning-the-pitt-hits-close-to-home-for-san-diego-healthcare-workers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/464569\/","title":{"rendered":"Emmy-winning \u2018The Pitt\u2019 hits close to home for San Diego healthcare workers"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you work in an emergency room, there’s a good chance you’ve watched HBO\u2019s medical drama, \u201cThe Pitt.\u201d<\/p>\n

Emergency room doctor James Elia<\/a> said he was hooked when he heard the show \u2014 while fiction \u2014 uses real cases to inform its storylines.<\/p>\n

\u201cI kind of try to figure out what’s going on with the patient,\u201d Elia said. \u201cBut at the same time you get a little bit of anxiety because it kind of brings you back to thinking, geez, am I back on shift.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elia has worked in the emergency department at Sharp Grossmont Hospital for 17 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome days we are like \u2018The Pitt,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it’s not every single day. It’s not every single hour. But we definitely have days where it’s that busy.\u201d<\/p>\n

That familiarity is part of what has made the HBO series stand out to healthcare workers and to some of their patients.<\/p>\n

Television can create very different expectations about what actually happens in an ER, Elia said.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople throughout the years would ask me, for example, are you going to pump the stomach, which we don’t really do, but you see that on some of these shows,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Pitt\u201d still has some Hollywood exaggeration, Elia said. But he thinks it gives viewers a more realistic sense of what emergency medicine can actually feel like.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’ve had some that might be and say, ‘Oh, I know what you go through because we watch \u2018The Pitt,\u2019’\u201d Elia said.<\/p>\n

Then there are the moments that may show viewers a side of the ER they rarely see.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere’s a fight scene with this nurse,\u201d emergency room nurse Amber Dinh said. \u201cShe gets in a fight with a patient because the patient is getting aggressive.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scene hit close to home for Dinh.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was recently in a fight with \u2026 a patient on a hold, and she’s in a psychiatric moment,\u201d Dinh said. \u201cShe ran out of her room and started swinging fists at people.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat stuff’s real,\u201d she said. \u201cI think it’s finally opening the public’s eyes and like, oh my gosh, like, people actually do this every day and have to help people in these conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she said the show isn’t just capturing the dramatic moments.<\/p>\n

It also shows the constant juggling that happens behind the scenes.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomeone’s dying in room five and someone’s, you know, asking for a hot blanket in room two,\u201d she said. \u201cEverything’s going on at once \u2026 and I think it’s nice that people see like, oh, there’s something bigger going on than just sometimes what I’m going through.\u201d<\/p>\n

For patients, that can be difficult to see from the other side of the waiting room.<\/p>\n

And it turns out, the show may be teaching people more than she realizes.<\/p>\n

A study <\/a>by USC’s Norman Lear Center surveyed more than 1,400 viewers of \u201cThe Pitt.\u201d Researchers found that people who watched the storyline about end-of-life care were more likely to say they planned to take steps to prepare for future medical decisions, including making a living will or designating a power of attorney.<\/p>\n

Nicki Rao, a palliative care physician at Sharp Grossmont, said the show is helping start important conversations.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it is sadly very common that people have not ironed out their wishes for end of life,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I probably see this scenario on a weekly basis, if not more often.\u201d<\/p>\n

The show has also put a spotlight on medical roles that can be invisible to the public.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope there can just be more awareness, especially for the fields\u2026that are not as popular,\u201d Rao said. \u201cSo like palliative care, like death doulas, like chaplains, the people that are really supporting our patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rao said that is part of what makes \u201cThe Pitt\u201d different from the medical shows many people grew up watching.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore you’d watch medical TV shows for the drama, the affairs, the crazy scenarios that you couldn’t figure out,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd now they’re showing real medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dinh said pulling back the curtain on the people who run emergency rooms may be the real impact of \u201cThe Pitt.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey’ll be like, ‘Oh, I see \u2018The Pitt\u2019 \u2026 is your job like \u2018The Pitt?\u2019’\u201d Dinh said. \u201cThey’re curious and it’s kind of nice because they’re actually interested to know what I do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you work in an emergency room, there’s a good chance you’ve watched HBO\u2019s medical drama, \u201cThe Pitt.\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[74,76,75],"class_list":["post-464569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}