Teaching Medicine and Medical Ethics Using Popular Culture

Abstract

There is an increasing awareness of the role of mass media and popular culture in communicating health information to the general public and medical students.1 Medical television series in particular have been identified as a rich source of health information and medical ethics training, depicting doctor–patient relationships that are both entertaining and educational. Recent research has shown that these fictional representations of the medical profession have an impact on perceptions of real-life doctors, and can influence recruitment of students into medical, nursing and health science degrees.2 Beginning with CBS’s City Hospital in 1951, medical television dramas have remained a staple of prime-time television.3 In his book, Medicinema, Brian Glasser notes that popular film culture and medicine have always been intricately connected, with film historians placing the first representations of medical personnel in fictional films before that of ‘cowboys, criminals or the clergy.’4