For the record, I really like The Mindy Project. That's the new show featuring Mindy Kaling (Kelly from The Office), in which she plays an OB/GYN. It's really, really funny. Like, from the very first episode. I highly recommend it.
That said, I wish she weren't an OB/GYN. Because it's freaking driving me crazy:
1) The male/female roles are way off. In the practice, it's 3 men plus Mindy. That is so rare for an ob/gyn practice these days.... but most doctors on TV have to be men, I guess. And the competing midwives upstairs? They're men too! WTF??? How are midwives men???? I could deal with it if it were meant to be a joke, but I don't think it is.
2) They don't seem at all invested in the practice. Mindy and her coworkers will just up and leave for a field trip to a high school without any notice. That is NOT how any medical practice on the face of the Earth actually runs.
3) They don't actually see patients. No, not one patient in the half-season I've watched so far. Well, maybe one.
I like the show and it's really funny, but what was the point of making her an ob/gyn if they're not going to have her do anything even remotely related to being a doctor? Why didn't they just have her work in, like, an office or something?
I do believe part of the reason Mindy Kaling wrote her character as an OB-Gyn was to honor her mother who worked as an OB-Gyn in Boston and passed away from pancreatic cancer just as the show was picked up by Fox.
ReplyDeleteBonus trivia: the character is called Mindy Lahiri, in honor of one of Kaling's favorite authors, Jhumpa Lahiri!
Haven't seen this show, but I try not to think about the accuracy of medical shows. Most are nowhere close, and the closest few in recent memory to me (ER and Scrubs) still have plenty of inconsistencies. I recently saw the Scrubs where Dough switches to pathology on a rerun... amusing, but totally unrealistic. Just gotta go with it, eh...
ReplyDeleteYeah, that's why I don't watch many medical shows. It bugs me.
DeleteHave you seen anything on TV that has 100% accuracy? You don't watch the Mindy Project for the medical accuracy or to see what the life of an OB-Gyn is really like, but you do it for the laughs.
ReplyDeleteLaw and Order is totally real.
DeleteThe issue isn't the lack of accuracy so much that they treat being an OB/GYN as any old office job instead of utilizing the various aspects of life as a doctor that could add to the story. You could substitute just about any other job in there without changing the episodes much.
DeleteYes, EXACTLY. That's what I was trying to say in the last paragraph. Why bother?
DeleteI'm always amazed at how people jump on you for your Weekly Whines. Just keep whining - I enjoy reading them!
ReplyDeleteIt's ok, I don't mind.
DeleteWhy are you amazed? I think that's the whole point of Fizzy's posts.
DeleteIt'd be pretty boring if no one commented and this whole blog was on one note, where everyone just nods.
LOL. I so wish my job was the way it's generally depicted on TV and in the movies.
ReplyDeleteI watched the first episode a while back and enjoyed it but haven't been back since. I like Mindy Kaling, but found the show a bit too... self-indulgent. It doesn't surprise me that the Obs/gyn angle hasn't really been mined. Shows like that are always funnier when they're more specific, e.g. The Office worked well because there's something intrinsically funny about a failing regional paper supply company, as opposed to just any generic office setting.
ReplyDeleteI do know one male midwife. One of my classmates from nursing school went into OB nursing, and then went back to school and became a Certified Nurse Midwife.
ReplyDeleteBut as you might expect, he's having a little trouble finding patients.
for what it's worth, i do think the male midwives upstairs are there for a laugh. it's never addressed explicitly, but their general hippy new-wave vibe is supposed to be comical, and the fact that they're men just makes it better.
ReplyDeleteI feel your pain. Even when shows have medical advisors, they get stuff wrong: Give him 60cc of epinephrine ... Really? And the portrayal of nurses over the years has been abysmal. Of course, the show House takes it one step further - doing away with nurses all together. Even during an emergency, only his group of residents(?) fellows(?) show up. And the CT scanner is always available. And the medications needed are apparently kept at the bedside or in their pockets. Not to mention that in today's atmosphere of intolerance for "disruptive physician behavior," House would not have a job, no matter how good he was at diagnosing. The show ER got it closest to right about medicine, but the roles of the doctors and nurses were still a little too traditional. I guess we are too boring the way we are.
ReplyDeleteMy problem with all of this misrepresentation is that patients tend to believe the TV show instead of the medical professional standing in front of them, and they expect their nurses and doctors to live up to whatever (or whomever - bring on Dr. Oz) their personal standard might be.
In my current job, I read complaints filed by patients/families to the Medical Board. In one day, we received two complaints filed by two different people against two different physicians. In the first, the patient complained (in writing, to the Medical Board, mind you) that his doctor was dressed too casually and it was unprofessional. He described the doc as wearing jeans, a turtleneck, and hiking boots (in the middle of winter in MA) and wanted the Board to do something about it. The second complaint was from a patient who complained that his doctor was dressed too formally for a clinically-practicing physician: she was wearing a cashmere sweater and skirt set and a thin gold necklace, and we should do something about setting standards of dress for physicians. (Um, how 'bout scrubs?) Oh, and yes, both of these complainers were men. So, in case you ever wondered why patients can not remember what you are trying to tell them about their disease process, this is what they are really thinking. TCG
I thought I read somewhere that she was playing into the stereotype of "Indian girl goes to med school, becomes successful doctor", though the rest of her life, of course, didn't fall into place the way her parents likely planned. That character reminds me very strongly of several friends/class-mates in med school.
ReplyDeleteI always joked throughout nursing school that I was going to be the first male lactation consultant. I think I've ran across one.
ReplyDelete