I hate doctor TV series except out-and-out comedies
such as Scrubs. All TV doctors say things doctors never say and do things
doctors never do.
I’m certain everyone with expertise, whether in the
law, plumbing, or stamp-collecting, rolls their eyes when TV writers portray
them.
Having said this, I confess that my wife and I love
The Good Wife which is about lawyers. It’s brilliantly written, but I have no
quarrel with legions of lawyers who fill the “comment” section of web sites
with furious denunciations of its inaccuracies. I acknowledge that those in The
Good Wife do things lawyers never do (such as sleuthing), and they are dazzling
in courtroom cross-examinations.
I sympathize because, in the years before I became a
hotel doctor, I was cross-examined twice. I was not the defendant but one of
the doctors who cared for the patients whose misfortune produced the suits.
Having watched TV lawyers tear witnesses to shreds,
I was nervous. Asked certain questions, I would have had to think hard to
defend my actions, but those questions never came.
The lawyers seemed not terribly sharp. It was clear
that they hadn’t boned up on their client’s medical problems. I had no trouble.
One lawyer enlarged a xerox of a page in the
patient’s chart and displayed it before the court. Unlike the other illegible
scrawls, my entry was neatly typed. Clearly that was suspicious, he proclaimed.
How did I explain that?
This did not show great acumen. How much IQ would it
have taken to learn that I typed all my chart notes?
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