This case study explored the representation of medical illness diagnoses on Grey’s Anatomy. Through the use of qualitative content analysis, we compared fictional medical diagnoses to publically available data on the rates of medical diagnoses within contemporary U.S. hospitals. We found that nearly half of the diagnoses made within our sample would be considered either rare, very rare, or extremely rare. Moreover, the most common medical diagnoses in contemporary U.S. hospitals account for a mere 6% of all diagnoses made on Grey’s. These findings extend and support prior observations that medical melodramas misrepresent the hospital context. Fictional portrayals of health care have the capacity to impact viewer expectations about real hospital care, and thus, our study adds to conversations involving the intersections between media representations and public health culture.

本案例研究探讨了《实习医生格》中医学疾病诊断的表现形式。通过使用定性内容分析，我们将虚构的医疗诊断与有关当代美国医院医疗诊断率的公开数据进行了比较。我们发现在我们的样本中做出的近一半诊断被认为是罕见的、非常罕见的或极其罕见的。此外，当代美国医院中最常见的医疗诊断仅占Grey's所有诊断的 6%. 这些发现扩展并支持了先前的观察，即医学情节剧歪曲了医院背景。对医疗保健的虚构描绘有能力影响观众对真实医院护理的期望，因此，我们的研究增加了涉及媒体表现和公共卫生文化之间交叉点的对话。