The Good Doctor (2012): primum non nocere
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liberty54
 March 01 2023
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    If you're anything like me, you can only fully enjoy movies created before a certain time period, likely because of the blatant propaganda or predictive-programming (if this truly exists) evident in movies post-2015. The propaganda may have existed prior, but at least they took measures to mask it (a little). I taught a night class last night, and had some caffeine around 6:30pm to prepare. I didn't quite fall asleep until midnight. However, this was well worth the early morning grogginess before Mommy-and-Me Music. This movie is a must-watch.

    Some may argue this is a stretch, but I think that the take-home message of this movie has many parallels with the counter-culture messages of today rivaling the medical field.

    



    Doctor, nurses, pharmacists, and other hospital workers-they are human. All humans have the capacity for evil, compliance, and errors.


    This movie quite honestly had my fiancé and I shaking because of the truths it presented. I was in tears more than once. There was an occurrence in the movie that I haven't seen before-and that is romancing patients. I chose to take a broader understanding of the phenomenon they presented-an innate capacity for malevolence in medical workers, throughout the entire hierarchy.


    I find it quite strange that a show, with the exact same title, was created recently. If I search for this movie, I'm overwhelmed by information about the new series instead of the movie I'm looking for starring Orlando Bloom. I'm a little bit skeptical of this, and maybe overly so. However, it wouldn't surprise me if this was intentional based on a clear history of "woke" re-writes. I could be wrong because only recently, we have seen some movies depicting and exposing the evils nurses have been capable of, like in the movie based on a true story, "the Good Nurse" (another must-watch).

    Dr. Death is also a good one about an incompetent neurosurgeon who bullshits his way out of training and causes harm (in some cases, fatal harm) to many patients.

    After falling for the God-Complex medical propaganda in Grey's Anatomy and House prior to my medical career, I see now that it's important to show people the truth-there's a good side and bad side to every institution, every organization-and to deny that as the reality is naive.


    *Spoiler Alert*


    A lonely young physician (resident) moves into a new apartment. It is clear that he is missing his family and his apartment appears very empty. He goes to work, gets bullied by nurses and attendings (part of the hazing and learning process), and comes home to nothing but a TV dinner.

    This is quite normal and true to real life, especially pre-social media. He later becomes fond of a female teenage patient who is also in a vulnerable position after being diagnosed with pyelonephritis and breaking up with a cheating boyfriend. He treats her normally and she goes home, however, he is later invited to her family home out of thanks for his care once she gets a bit healthier. She is absent from dinner with her family and the doctor while having a conversation with her ex-boyfriend. After dinner, in the midst of socializing with her family, the doctor places sugar in her remaining antibiotics and disposes of the true antibacterial powder while in the shared family bathroom. She not surprisingly ends up in the hospital again as his patient, and he finds various reasons and methods of withholding treatment, only for her to ultimately die of sepsis related to the unresolved infection.

    She wrote about her experiences in a journal and, while gathering her belongings post-mortem, an orderly finds this and presents it to the doctor secretly. He had read through the journal and found that they had some level of a romantic relationship in the hospital. He uses this as blackmail, while having sexual relations with patients himself, and demands a prescription for oxycodone in place of the journal. The doctor complies with this in effort to save his reputation, license, and liberties. Nurses and attendings become suspicious of the doctor and he quickly realizes that this isn't something he can comply with long-term. He ultimately spikes the oxycodone pills with potassium cyanide and kills the orderly to solve his problem (yes, it gets dark).

    No consequences exist for this physician. He is presumed innocent by attendings and detectives, and at the end of the movie-you see him continuing to work as an independent physician, after having completed his residency. The last scene of the movie is quite chilling.

    He continues to care for patients, smiling as he casually begins to assess a young child, lacking any guilt or consequences of his previous actions.

    medical residency
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