The Truth in Scrubs
When people learn I’m four months away from graduating medical school, they undoubtedly ask me one of two things: what kind of medicine am I going into and which medical television show is the most realistic. Maybe ER or Grey’s Anatomy? My answer: Scrubs.
Yes, Scrubs. Everyone has a different incredulous reaction to this. Some chuckle, some frown, some ask, “Seriously?” in a high-pitched voice. But – seriously – beyond the slapstick humor and fart jokes, this series captures the medical profession in a surprisingly complex way that I didn’t appreciate until after I was on the hospital wards for a year and a half. What first appeared to be written into the show for the sake of humor – the quirky idiosyncrasies of the characters, the harsh interpersonal exchanges, the all-pervading social ineptness of the most senior characters – are actually basic motifs of social interaction in the hierarchy of inpatient medicine.
[***Editors' Note: Need a refresher about medical hierarchies and the cast of characters on Scrubs? No problem; we've got you covered. Jump here or here.***]
Truth #1: The (Approval) Carrot on a Stick
Dr. Kelso to Elliot: Sweetheart, if I wanted you to give me three wrong answers in a row, I’d just ask for “the usual.”
“Pimping” is so-called medical tradition; it entails rapid-fire, knowledge-based questions directed at a resident or medical student in the presence of peers and often the patients you’ve been trying hard all day to look competent in front of. Being “pimped” is just one of many ways in which medical trainees strive for the approval of their superiors. Forget food, forget sleep – approval. Medical trainees are perpetual students looking for report cards; after twenty years of conditioning (school), this is what we do best.
Scrubs does a very decent version of morning rounds that hearkens straight to the heart of anyone who’s been in the pimping hot-seat. On morning rounds, the Chair of Medicine, Dr. Kelso, “pimps” the interns (first-year residents), which include main characters JD and Elliot. From across the small cluster of people eagerly clutching their clipboards and hanging on Dr. Kelso’s every word, Elliot is singled out with Kelso’s eagle eye. Elliot returns his gaze with a pitiful yearning and a naïve hope that she will actually give the correct answer. This is the carrot: the gleaming, shining opportunity to impress her superiors and distinguish herself from her peers. The shiny prize that flashes from the haze of vital signs, CT scans, and two hours of sleep.
The question is launched from Dr. Kelso’s stern façade. And like most of us actually in medical training, Elliot’s delivery conforms to an arc. The face relaxes and the eyes fall as the mind fishes out the material to form an answer. Eyelids rise, eyes brighten, the voice begins strong with the first few syllables of the coveted answer that promises so much glory.
Then, as the eyes focus back on the questioner and Great Judge, a parallel thread begins in her mind as Elliot tries to read the reaction on Dr. Kelso’s face before her answer is even complete. Am I right? What is he thinking? What page was that on? Please let him be talking about what I think he’s talking about. With no signs of non-verbal confirmation from the other side, her voice drops in pitch and volume, trailing into nothing as she completes her answer.
This is where the show takes some satirical license, but the overall effect is the externalization of what most doctors-in-training really experience internally while being pimped. Dr. Kelso, maintaining the same piercing eagle eye and clamped lips that concluded the question, does not react. Probably three seconds pass without him outwardly showing any registration of the answer, but it is an eternity to the intern waiting for the Chief of Medicine’s verdict on her answer – which is actually a verdict on her entire life.
Finally, the crushing blows that Scrubs is known for. Instead of a simple “correct” or “incorrect,” Kelso breaks his cruel silence with a sarcastic comment that at first patronizingly caters to the answer. It sounds like Elliot’s answer might be correct … The Carrot. And, here’s the stick: As Kelso goes on, his response builds to an elaborate demonstration of how absurd her answer is. By the end of his tirade, Kelso not only blows Elliot’s answer out of the water, but comments on her overall intelligence, her childhood, and what she’s wearing.