HOUSE: Polio, Poisoning and Plots
House is recruited to save a dying CIA operative and Foreman is left behind at Princeton-Hillsboro Hospital to supervise the fellowship applicants. Eerie similarities appear at both venues and the events at each hospital faithfully follows the House play book: initial diagnostic impression, steady worsening, multiple revisions of the working diagnosis, eventually resolution with an unexpected twist.
Something else was also similar. In each instance the original diagnosis ended up being correct. Foreman and House were right but allowed themselves to be misled by colleagues and marginal information. Had they followed their intuition the entire episode could've ended before the first commercial break. In case you wondered, I counted eight commercials during that break!
Foreman's crew cared for a young woman with apparent heatstroke which changed to: Miller-Fischer Syndrome (variant of paralyzing Guillan-Barre), multiple sclerosis, systemic lupus, botulism, and polio (last USA case occurred in 1979).
Meanwhile in Langley, House's patient had extreme rapid weight loss and scalded skin. He originally was suspected as having eaten a nut toxin, then they jumped to other exotic toxins, radiation poisoning, pancreatitis, Waldenstrom's Macroglobulinemia (blood cancer), and back to radiation poisoning.
The actual plot details matter little in this episode. The woman ended up not having polio and the spy did eat too many nuts. As a physician I most enjoyed observing Foreman's and House's different reactions to being wrong. Both made many misjudgments during this episode.
Whenever House found himself up a dark alley he merely made a U-turn and kept moving towards finding a solution. Foreman, on the other hand, was emotionally wounded when his decisions imploded, and then the patient and younger doctors made mincemeat of him. To his credit, Foreman reclaimed enormous credibility with the patient by humbly apologizing for his mistake - something I have never witnessed about House.
This TV drama is pure fiction but tonight's lesson remains genuine: doctors are human and, by definition, doctors will make mistakes. The real test is how one reacts to those inevitable failures. I have watched insecure colleagues blame everybody else on the planet for their missteps. Others continue to deny that any mistake occurred whatsoever - their psyche (ego) won't permit any other interpretation of the facts. Such behavior is tragic because it contradicts all that defines the collegial profession of healing. At the same time such immature behavior tarnishes the reputations of all physicians.
Time and again the fellowship candidates live by the credo "Results matter". As they gain experience (usually by making more mistakes) I suspect that motto may be amended: "Results matter - Character matters more".
Related Topics: Technorati Tags: HOUSE, TV, Hugh Laurie
2 Comments:
Thanks for the reminder about docs and mistakes. It's easy to forget that doctors are still human, especially when they hold up Dr. House as an example. :)
I just love the manner in which health care pros fall in like with shows that are, at best, barely arguable in terms of accuracy.
Attorneys don't like "Shark".
Judges hate "Boston Legal".
Don't get me started on "Greys, Private Practice or ER".
but thanks for having siad that none of us are perfect, and for reminding us all, that as providers and consumers we must be diligent in sharing information and working together, if no one is to suffer unnecessarily.
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