Hollywood's war against physicians escalates

Hollywood has it in for physicians. That's the only conclusion I can draw from the new release of the thriller Pathology, close on the heels of the anesthesic-awareness terror film Awake.

Check out the trailers for the movies. A word of warning: they're pretty gruesome.

Pathology


Awake


AWAKE
Awake had anesthetists up in arms, as we wrote last summer, with its depiction of Canadian actor Hayden Christensen as a patient who isn't properly sedated and feels every aspect of his open-heart surgery. "Anesthesiologists are not looking forward to [Awake] coming out at all," University of Toronto anesthestist Dr Scott Beattie told the Toronto Star at the time.

I recall that at a Ontario Hospital Association conference last year, one anesthesiology professor was trying to kill some time as technicians tried to repair the projector in the lecture hall. He jokingly offered to talk about how he felt about Awake. The doctors in the room shifted in their seats and looked around uncomfortably. Thankfully the technical problems were resolved quickly and everyone breathed a palpable sigh of relief.

PATHOLOGY
From the trailer and the several reviews I've seen of Pathology, it looks even more damning than Awake. (If that's possible.) The film's pathologists appear to be sex-crazed, blood-thirsty nihilists. Of course, some might say that's entirely true -- but I somehow doubt that's an accurate portrayal of pathologists. The pathologists whom I have spoken to in the past have been thoughtful, concerned and responsible (and, I admit it, less attractive than the actors in Pathology).

HOLLYWOOD'S PREDATORY PHYSICIANS
What's up with all these evil doctors invading Hollywood features lately? I have a theory: the 24-hour news cycle and the advent of the internet have made patients much ore alert to the shortcomings of certain physicians (a quick web search will turn up plenty of scandals). People's expectations are of infallible, perfect medical professionals; the reality is less glamorous and awe-inspiring. Now, a spate of fear-inducing films about dangerous doctors has been the result. As one critic put it recently in a review of Pathology, the horrific product of Hollywood's look at doctors of late is "the ultimate testament to the arrogant detachment of the medical profession."

That same interpretation can be applied to the Canadian situation, too. Events over the past few years in the country's pathology and laboratory system have been disastrous, as I write in an article in this month's National Review of Medicine. It's no wonder movie producers saw pathology as fertile ground for a thriller with a large body count.

On the other hand, one somewhat more optimistic take on medicine could be found in the excellent French film The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, directed by Julian Schnabel and released last year, in which the locked-in-syndrome patient's doctors, nurses and therapists are sympathetic, intelligent, compassionate and even sultry. Now that is the kind of doctor everyone wants to see.


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