What does the bored fourth-year medical student do who is one week from the match? She flips throgh the movie channels on cable and comes up with a movie called “Vital Signs”. This little gem stars Jimmy Smits, of LA Law and NYPD Blue fame, as an attending surgeon with tons of hunky male medical students rotating in and out of his service. The interesting thing is that this movie has every bad medical cliche possible.
There is stereotypical angry surgical resident who hates the smart medical student and ends up neglecting a patient.
The attending surgeon, while cute in his scrubs, is more interested in choosing Fontilla Bass’ “Rescue Me” as his catchy OR music. The attending surgeon is a bastard on rounds and with his teaching. (Bastard surgeons are the exception not the rule)
The women medical students all whine and want to go into pediatrics!
Every patient encounter causes much sweating and angst by each medical student, even the smart medical student. (Most of your patient encounters are pretty routine and great learning experiences)
The surgical resident is asked to step aside so the talented male medical student can “assist” the attending during the surgery. (Dream on, this will never happen unless the resident faints from lack of fluids)
Any other wonderful but totally unrealistic medical theme movies out there?? Watching Jimmy Smits sweat was worth sitting through the movie though.
Hmm, I tried my local Blockbuster video for this last night but no luck. There was a video I saw a while back, I think called “getting in” where someone on the waitlist travel round trying to get rid of the competition. Difference is it was meant to be funny. The last movie I saw that I thought was funny was ‘Legally Blonde’ (okay, everyone just lost any possible respect for me ). I just loved the idea of sending in a ‘video’ as your admissions essay.
I was just about to give up on “Legally Blonde” when it started getting funny and I did end up liking it despite myself! I vaguely remember the “Pre-med, pre-law, what’s the difference” line from Animal House, which is definitely one of the greatest movies ever made.
I have heard of, but never seen, that movie “Getting In.” A friend of mine who took the MCAT when I did (April 99) was suffering insomnia shortly before the test and was idly flipping through channels when she spotted this one, and could not believe her eyes as she saw the MCAT logo and people sweating through the test. She said it was a surreal experience!
In “Meet the Parents,” there’s an MCAT report faxed to the suspicious dad… it looked pretty authentic to me but I remember some discussion on the Princeton Review about how it was obviously bogus, I forget why. (probably because they were contemptuous that Ben Stiller was a nurse!)
