{"id":395309,"date":"2026-01-08T14:29:27","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T14:29:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/395309\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T14:29:27","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T14:29:27","slug":"an-emergency-department-leader-on-what-the-pitt-gets-right-and-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/395309\/","title":{"rendered":"An Emergency Department Leader on What \u2018The Pitt\u2019 Gets Right \u2013 and Wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"

When Jean Hoffman<\/a>, MD, was growing up, she watched ER, the long-running NBC series about an urban hospital\u2019s often-chaotic emergency department. The experience steered her toward a career in emergency medicine.<\/p>\n

\u201cI can\u2019t believe my parents let me watch that show,\u201d Hoffman says with a laugh. \u201cI loved that show, and it was motivating to me. That was my world, and I knew I was meant for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

ER featured young actor Noah Wyle, who, at the start of the series, was a medical student who almost vomited at the sight of severe trauma. Now, in his mid-50s, Wyle stars as a senior attending physician in The Pitt, HBO Max\u2019s hit streaming series about an urban hospital\u2019s often-chaotic emergency department. In the show\u2019s premiere episode, a medical student faints at the sight of severe trauma. (A cynical resident starts calling her \u201cCrash.\u201d)<\/p>\n

Hoffman \u2013 an associate professor in the University of Colorado Anschutz Department of Emergency Medicine<\/a>, and medical director of the ED at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital (UCH) \u2013 sees a lot to like in the show, which kicks off its second season on January 8. But she would like to have a word with Noah Wyle.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would like to invite Noah Wyle to come tour here. Or anybody on the show. My door is always open,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Hoffman wants to show Wyle \u2013 who also serves as executive producer of The Pitt \u2013 that there are big differences between her ED and the one in the show, with a waiting room filled with sick and injured patients waiting hours to see a doctor.<\/p>\n

Big differences<\/p>\n

\u201cOur emergency department does not look like that, even though we see an extraordinary number of patients,\u201d Hoffman says. \u201cThe Pitt shows an antiquated way of how you operate an ED. We have done highly innovative things to get care to patients quickly, so we don\u2019t have a waiting room full of people and total chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n

First and foremost, she says, \u201cWe eliminated nurse triage\u201d \u2013 a system in which a nurse sets a care priority for incoming patients after asking questions to assess the severity of their condition. Several recent studies have shown that this practice can result in incorrect triage decisions and treatment delays.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have medics and doctors see you immediately,\u201d Hoffman says. \u201cWe don\u2019t have someone going through first and asking, \u2018What did you have for lunch? Do you have any allergies?\u2019 We\u2019re going to ask, \u2018Why are you here?\u2019 And you say, \u201cChest pain,\u2019 and we say, \u2018That\u2019s an emergency. We\u2019re going to get you seen by a doctor.\u2019<\/p>\n

“That\u2019s probably the biggest difference here from the show,” she adds. “We\u2019re getting people what they came for, which is getting their medical emergency treated quickly. If you get people in front of a physician quickly and get them what they need, they don\u2019t need to sit in the waiting room for 12 hours to get their asthma inhaler refilled.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photo at top: Noah Wyle (center left) in a scene from the HBO Max series The Pitt. Photo: Warrick Page\/HBO Max.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

A chaotic scene in the crowded ED waiting area in a scene from the HBO Max series The Pitt. Photo: Warrick Page\/HBO Max<\/p>\n

A focus on boarding<\/p>\n

Characters in The Pitt complain about \u201cboarding\u201d \u2013 admitted patients who must wait in the ED for long periods because no inpatient beds are available in the hospital.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have boarding sometimes, and I do love that the show brings that issue to the forefront as a problem in hospitals,\u201d Hoffman says. \u201cNo one is immune to it because the number of hospital beds per patient is decreasing in this country. But we do not experience that to the extent they show in The Pitt because we have excellent hospital throughput,\u201d meaning that UCH focuses on moving patients efficiently through their care journey by optimizing staffing, bed management, communication, and other factors.<\/p>\n

Hoffman hopes the series\u2019 scenes of a packed waiting room don\u2019t scare people who need to come to an ED. \u201cI\u2019m not saying we\u2019re perfect. Sometimes you\u2019re going to wait. But I think we do a really good job at all levels of personnel and processes to make sure we take care of people as soon as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

In The Pitt, the ED staff seems resigned to the chaos and dysfunction that surrounds them. Not so at UCH\u2019s ED, says Hoffman, where her colleagues feel they have agency to identify problems and find ways to improve processes. \u201cI don\u2019t want people to think that we are victims who are doing nothing about any problems that come up,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Also, as an ED administrator, Hoffman doesn\u2019t relish the show\u2019s depiction of hospital managers \u201cas the source of all evil, when all of us are just trying to make things better. We\u2019re not trying to inflict misery; we\u2019re trying to get the patients the care they need.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"ED
The emergency department at UCHealth University of Colorado Hospital during a simulated mass-casualty training exercise on October 1, 2025. Photo: Mark Harden | CU Anschutz Department of Emergency Medicine.<\/p>\n

\u2018Giving us a platform\u2019<\/p>\n

One of the things The Pitt gets right, Hoffman says, is the medicine, including the jargon used and how providers treat patients. She notes that Joe Sachs, MD, FACEP, one of the series\u2019 executive producers and writers, is also an emergency physician, lending authenticity to its scripts.<\/p>\n

The series is valuable in focusing on provider stress and burnout under trying conditions, she says.<\/p>\n

\u201cDuring COVID, we were heroes. People were thanking us, and it felt good. After COVID, it\u2019s been a beat down. I can\u2019t put my finger on why, but it\u2019s hard. We see a lot of death, destruction, and darkness every single day. That can take a toll, and we work to ensure that all our medical providers feel supported. The show does an excellent job of bringing the providers\u2019 stories to light and showing how hard it can be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoffman also credits The Pitt and its popularity for \u201cgiving us a platform to have this discussion about how we can do things better in EDs, about things we\u2019ve been saying for a long time. Emergency departments are the canary in the coal mine of health care.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hoffman says she has worked before in EDs that were more like the one in The Pitt. \u201cA lot of the operational things we do here, if they were implemented elsewhere, would help mitigate some of those issues,\u201d she says. \u201cI love that The Pitt has highlighted problems in emergency medicine. What I don\u2019t love is that it doesn\u2019t highlight places that are doing a good job and have found solutions to some of these systemic issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

What do Hoffman\u2019s emergency-medicine colleagues think of the show? \u201cMost of them don\u2019t watch it,\u201d she says with a grin. \u201cThere are two camps. One is people who don\u2019t want to go home and watch it because that\u2019s what they did all day. The other is people who share some of my criticisms of the show. I don\u2019t know any ED doctors who have watched the whole thing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Jean Hoffman, MD, was growing up, she watched ER, the long-running NBC series about an urban hospital\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395310,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[59],"tags":[97,252,253],"class_list":{"0":"post-395309","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health-care","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-health-care","10":"tag-healthcare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395309"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}