TV review : House MD

Tonight is a season premier of my favorite TV show, House MD. on the surface this is a show about a misanthropic doctor and his associates. Every episode follows a similar formula: first a patient collapses, then they try treatment that repeatedly do not work. Towards the end of the show, House will get a brilliant idea and treat the patient. There is also a little bit of the personal life storyline for the characters in every episode as well. But the show is actually much much deeper than it would initially appear.

House MD is really a show about two different styles of practicing medicine. In the 60s and 70s the style of medicine known as paternalism was taught and widely practiced. Paternalism is roughly defined as a style where the doctor knows all and the patients except his wisdom without question. Believers in this practice saw patients as weak and saw science is all-powerful to solve diseases. The competing philosophy of that is humanism, in which the physicians sympathize with their patients and work with them to find a common solution to their problems. Physicians who practice in the style try to use a holistic approach and appreciate patient's feelings and moral values.

As a doctor, House represents the alpha paternalist doctor. He is absolutely brilliant as a scientist and always right, but disdains patient interaction. He is thrust in to a modern hospital however, and forced to confront several of the changing aspects of medicine. His boss is a woman, as as one of his fellows. He also has a minority fellow, to go along with a fellow who is a rich white legacy. While he is an angry paternalist, his fellows all believe strongly in humanism. The overriding premise of the show is that his paternalist style can solve all of his patients problems but ironically enough, he cannot solve his own. For his personal struggles, he needs but resists the humanism of his colleagues.

It should also be noted that House with his fellows must confront all of the major problems facing modern medicine. There are episodes about, pharmaceutical companies trying to buy influence, fetal rights, patient rights, rights to treatment of prisoners and poor people, and personal struggles with drug addiction and dishonest relationships. Some episodes tend to confront the philosophical topics, such as how to spend the last moments of one's life, were facing up to mistakes. Further episodes comment on politics or current events. The topics on the show read like a list of topics from an actual medical bioethics class and are deeper than almost any other show on television..

While the cases that appear on the show are unusual and unlikely to occur in the number that they do, the actual medical dialogue on the show is surprisingly accurate. The treatments and symptoms are generally right from the textbook. While the show rarely betrays the long and often tedious work involved in being a physician, it does accurately portray the roles that students and attending physicians have in a modern hospital. Of all the medical shows on television, House easily is the most interesting to someone who understands or works in medicine.