The Beautiful Hospital vs. The Ugly Hospital vs. The Real Hospital

Sallie Tisdale in Salon on the medical realities portrayed in television shows : House vs. ER vs. Grey's Anatomy vs. Scrubs. She's a real-life nurse in a real hospital, by the way.

An excerpt:

Like a lot of people who work in healthcare -- I'm a nurse -- I started watching "House" because of the mysterious diseases involved. Everyone loves a rare disease. And I was perversely charmed by the title character's nastiness. House says the kind of things I sometimes want to say -- mostly, to doctors. (Dr. Weber: "I know I know you." House: "Sure you do, Dick." Weber: "The name's Phillip." House: "Oh, my bad. Something to do with your face. I always think your name is Dick.") I kept watching in spite of his flamingly litigious behavior: He calls one patient "Mrs. Nympho" and says of a Chinese woman, "Not the sharpest chopstick in the drawer, is she?" I watched for a whole season, in spite of knowing that the crude passes, Internet porn and Vicodin addiction meant that any doctor like him would be both bankrupt and imprisoned.