Abstract
BackgroundMedical dramas have been popular since their inception, especially among medical students. We hypothesized that the recent increase in the availability of TV medical series through online streaming platforms has probably changed health science students’ viewing habits as well as the representation of bioethical conflicts and health professionals.MethodsWe invited undergraduate students of medicine, nursing, and human biology to complete a self-administered questionnaire about their viewing habits and perceptions of the depictions of bioethical issues and professionalism in TV medical series.ResultsOf the 355 respondents, 98.6 % had watched TV in the last year, 93.5 % watched TV series, and 49.6 % watched medical dramas more than once a week. The most-viewed medical dramas were The Good Doctor, House MD, and Grey’s Anatomy. The most-remembered bioethical topics were medical errors, inappropriate professional behaviors, and death. Most students considered that ideals of professionalism were depicted positively and professionals were portrayed as intelligent, professionally qualified, and competent.ConclusionsMedical dramas are very popular with health science students and are potentially useful as teaching tools for discussing issues related to bioethics and professionalism.
Highlights
Medical dramas have been popular since their inception, especially among medical students
Study population A total of 355 of 918 students participated in the survey; responses were obtained from 124/339 (36.6 %) of eligible medical students, 143/381 (37.5 %) of eligible nursing students, and 88/198 (44.4 %) of eligible human biology students (Table 1)
More than 12 years after Czarny et al.’s original survey of health science students’ TV viewing habits [10], we found that most health sciences students had watched TV in the last year, corroborating the findings of other studies in the interim [7, 9]
Summary
Medical dramas have been popular since their inception, especially among medical students. TV medical dramas have been very popular since their inception [1,2,3,4,5]. Medical dramas are mainly watched for entertainment. These fictional narratives provide concrete medical situations and are often regarded as a source of health information by viewers [1, 12]. Several authors have suggested that medical dramas are a potential tool for teaching students in health sciences disciplines [2, 5, 13, 14]. Williams et al [16] pointed out several potential uses of House MD, Scrubs, and Cambra-Badii et al BMC Medical Education (2021) 21:509
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