Combat Hospital reviews
Contact information for the show
August 2011 -- ABC's summer drama Combat Hospital is a Canadian show about an international team of military health workers caring for the wounded near the front lines of the Afghan conflict in 2006. The first two episodes, airing in late June, indicate that Combat Hospital has some positive features for nursing. Nurse manager Will Royal holds the military rank of commander, and at times he displays authority and clinical skill. And the show seems almost obsessed with tweaking physician entitlement by making physician characters mop floors! But the show on the whole still perpetuates the same damaging myth that the more realistic Hollywood hospital shows like NBC's ER have: that physicians are the smart masters of health care and the only health workers worthy of any sustained interest, while nurses may have some skills but are there to assist. The show's five major characters are physicians. Royal is the only significant nurse character, and he is by far the least important among the health professionals. Royal functions as an unusually assertive aide-de-camp. He actually harasses one surgeon for his arrogant, caddish ways. But Royal's own lines also suggest that physicians are automatically in charge of care, no matter how inexperienced they are; he introduces one brand-new trauma physician to "your nurse." Royal's role is not unlike that of Tuck Brody in CBS's Miami Medical (2010). Brody was also a competent, aggressive black male nurse manager who could display real authority, but who was essentially a logistics manager for the trauma physician stars. Here, as there, nurses rarely play a notable role in direct care except to call out vital signs and carry out physician commands. Combat Hospital could be far worse for nursing. But it's unlikely to disrupt the popular narrative that brilliant physicians rule and pragmatic nurses serve. The show was created by Jinder Oujla-Chalmers, Douglas Steinberg, and Daniel Petrie Jr. more...
Contact information for the show
To send your comments directly to the show, please send them to:
Daniel Petrie, Douglas Steinberg
Executive Producers,
Combat Hospital
Sienna Films
183 Harbord St
Toronto, ON M5S 1H5
Canada
Phn: +1 416 703 1126
http://www.siennafilms.com
siennainfo@siennafilms.com
And please copy us on your letters at letters@truthaboutnursing.org. Thank you!
Show created by Daniel Petrie Jr., Douglas Steinberg, Jinder Oujla-Chalmers
Luke Mably as Dr. Simon Hill
Gord Rand as Sean Kelly
Michelle Borth as Rebecca Gordon
Terry Chen as Captain Bobby Trang
Elias Koteas as Xavier Marks
Karan Oberoi as Talwar Mehra
Arnold Pinnock as Commander Will Royal