My mother always wanted me to become a medical doctor when I was growing up. Having worked as a nurse in a renal-dialysis unit, she saw the demands and challenges of life in medicine, but the rewards as well.
I did became a doctor of sorts, a doctor of souls.The Emmy-winning hit HBO Max show The Pitt just concluded its second season. It depicts the stresses of working in an urban emergency department/Level 1 trauma center in Pittsburgh. I found parallels abound between those doctors attending to bodies and those priests ministering to souls.
Take a peek at season one:
CONTENT NOTE: The Pitt is rated TV-MA and, so, is definitely NOT for the whole family. The medical procedures can be extremely graphic; there are instances of rough language and flashes of nudity; and secular attudes and social/political agendas do regularly intrude. Faith plays a role more in season one (including in some positive, and some puzzling, ways) than in season two. However, so far, the show hasn't been hostile to faith or believers.
Some relatives joked that I might as well have become a doctor, because it takes about as long as to become a medical doctor as it does an ordained priest.
Four years of graduate theology, a novitiate year, an optional pastoral year and a transitional diaconate year (not to mention formation meetings) make for a long priestly formation process.
The heart of season one of The Pitt is that a good amount of the storylines surround the student doctors on their first day at a teaching hospital. You can sense their eagerness for the busyness of the ER after four years of classroom work, but the viewer also gets a sense of the long road ahead.
Residencies can run three to seven years, depending on the specialty. A veteran attending doctor (played by former ER star Noah Wyle, also a producer, writer and director on the show) serves as a mentor to the med students, interns and residents.
He affirms them in many cases, yet challenging them in other instances.
While the medical staff works 12-hour shifts, each season finds a reason so that they stay three extra hours. A mass shooting in season one, and a computer blackout in season two, postpone the ability to leave at the end of a shift (unless you're season-two med student Joy, who maintains her end-of-shift boundary).
Each episode is close to one hour of real time in the ER, communicating that the days are long and tremendously demanding.
Here's a look at season two:
On some of my duty days as the on-call priest, I’m attending to parish, school and hospital calls from the moment I finish my morning coffee until the moment my head hits the pillow at night. That does not include a rare end-of-life anointing that jars me out of sleep a few times a year.
So, days in either profession are long which brings me to the last point of contact…
By all accounts, Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (Wyle) is an excellent ER doctor. Yet, from the opening episode, we suspect he’s not perfect. In fact, he carries personal demons, namely, workplace burnout.
“We meet people in the midst of the worst day of their lives” goes the mantra throughout the ER. Sometimes the doctors and nurses save the patient’s life, but every day they deal with death. Facing that day in and day out would exact a deep toll on a human being.
We see the effects of that profession on the likes of Dr. Robby and his age peers, Dr. Baran Al-Hashimi (Sepideh Moafi) and night-shift attending Dr. Jack Abbott (Shawn Hatosy).
The priesthood, likewise, deals with entering into human suffering, presiding funerals, anointing of the sick, and counseling someone through a troubled past or failed relationship. However, the moments of joy, baptisms, marriages, ordinations, and conversions provide balance to the sorrowful.
In my pre-seminary finance days, I used to exercise at a health club connected to a hospital. When I mentioned I was entering seminary, one of my weightlifting partners, a nurse at the hospital, said that, out of any profession he's known, ER doctors might also benefit from a vow of celibacy.
Again, the aforementioned long hours and taxing work leave many a physician with little emotional fuel left for a relationship at home. Without much context for either profession, I agreed with him just to be agreeable. Only actual ER docs know for sure.
The Pitt almost convinced me of my nurse friend’s contention, until the final episode. After an entire day of dealing with death and suffering in a “pit” of hell (pun intended), Dr. Robby holds an abandoned baby in his arms. There is a light of hope and joy in his life.
Also, Dr. Robby does have some sort of relationship going with nurse/case manager Noelle (Meta Golding).
So, for a profession that does not organically include the balance of joy and sorrow the way the priesthood does, I would say medical doctors would need the option of romantic and parental connection in their personal lives.
There was even a scene in season-two finale in which Dr. Robby laments not having the wife, kids, and house by a pond he always thought he would have.
The IMDB premise line of the show says it the best: “The daily lives of healthcare professionals in a Pittsburgh hospital as they juggle personal crises, workplace politics, and the emotional toll of treating critically ill patients, revealing the resilience required in their noble calling.”
That’s the statement with which I would agree. It is a noble calling. Set alongside the priesthood and religious life, the two embody the noblest of all callings.
The Pitt is set to return for a third season in January, and a hint about the timing of the episodes emerged at a recent presentation to advertisers.
From Deadline.com:
“We’re about to start production on Season 3,” Wyle shared. “It’s set in early November, just before the holidays, ushering in a whole new set of emergencies and confrontations and complications.”
Image: HBO Max
Father Vince Kuna, C.S.C., is a Holy Cross priest and a 2016 graduate of USC's film school. Click here to visit Father Vince Kuna’s IMDB page.
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