E.R. "Going Home." September 29, 1994. Written by Lydia Woodward.
A nurse who attempted suicide and who was saved by the E.R. team returns to work on a difficult day, acing a shooting victim, an elderly man with a heart attack, and an Alzheimer's patient who likes to sing.
The television show E.R. uses a number of devices to create a sense of verisimilitude. The show is not real but realistic--it gives the illusion of reality even as it puts more activity into an average day than any hospital could normally handle. Anyone who has visited a big-city emergency room knows that it is not as hectic as it appears in this series, but the program is logical and consistent in the way it depicts the average workday in the hospital. The makers of the program accomplish this with a number of elements in use by other shows attempting to create the same illusion of reality, including continuing story lines, a mixture of business and personal life, multiple characters and stories followed simultaneously, and a busy atmosphere evoking a sense of activity, dedication, and professionalism amid chaos.
The setting is a big-city hospital, and while we may know that this hospital is busier than the average would really be, as viewers we accept the activity as real. The show maintains this sense of activity from the beginning to the end, and the large number of characters makes it possible for a number of different things to be taking place at the same time. This can occur in a flurry of desperate action, as when the heart attack victim is in one room and the shooting victim in another, with the nurse serving as the link by moving between the two rooms to help as needed. Each time an emergency patient arrives, the same essential steps are followed--symptoms are discussed, options weighed, the patient is lifted from the gurney to the table, and a team assembles and surrounds the patient to do what is necessary. This occurs when the sh
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