How accurate is ‘The Pitt’? We asked a South Philly nurse.

The Pitt, chronicling a 15-hour shift “in real time” of an emergency room of the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Hospital, concluded its first season earlier this month. It has become a hit TV show — so what do real medical professionals think of the series?

The Pitt comes from a few veterans of another great medical drama, ER — star and executive producer Noah Wyle, showrunner and creator R. Scott Gemmill, and executive producer John Wells. The team has spoken of its commitment to medical accuracy and the importance of centering the everyday struggles of medical professionals.

The Inquirer spoke to South Philly’s Louis Weil, who works as a nurse practitioner in family medicine at an urgent care facility. Before that, Weil worked as an EMT, a technician in Jefferson Hospital’s emergency department, and a bedside nurse in emergency trauma and medicine.

So what’s most accurate about The Pitt? “The constant onslaught and high volume in the emergency department certainly rings true,” Weil said.

The series maintains a hectic and chaotic pace throughout its 15-episode debut season. “The ambulances pile up in our driveway, the waiting room overflows, and on a daily basis, we are dealing with more patient volume than we can safely manage.”

Something that we see a lot during the first season (which Wyle’s character, Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, addresses) is that there’s not always enough space to house patients, which Weil says leads to backups, resulting in “patients who may wait for, sometimes, 12 hours to be seen.”

Also accurate is the show’s portrayal of the waiting room experience — including arguments over wearing masks and a patient attacking a nurse.

“Unfortunately, escalation and frustrations over wait times also contribute to violence and assault against healthcare workers,” Weil said. “I have seen my coworkers get assaulted by patients, heard about experiences of colleagues being followed to their cars, and listened to many credible-sounding death threats from patients and their family members.”

It’s not all quite as upsetting as that, though; Weil also identifies with some of the morbidly funny moments. This, in his experience, includes “crude flirtation from a handcuffed patient, getting urinated on by someone off their antipsychotic medication, having conversations with familiar drunk patients, and finding rats running around a place that is supposed to be kept ‘as clean as possible.’”

In terms of inaccuracies on The Pitt, Weil said they’re minimal or things that the TV show is playing up for drama because, well, it’s a TV show. Doctors and nurses, he said, do their best to not verbally snap at patients, a thing that does happen on The Pitt.

Most importantly, Weil said he felt seen by the series.

“I think the overwhelming patience and grace we see in the staff at The Pitt is incredibly well-represented,” he said. “Many of us have dealt with so much chronic stress that it takes a lot to interrupt our daily routine of witnessing other people’s traumatic moments while operating smoothly.”

Weil confessed to crying at least once during each episode, such as at Robby’s moving from case to case “with scarcely a moment to pee or eat food.” They weren’t the moments “constructed to make me feel grief,” Weil said, but the echoes of his life on the screen.

It reminded him of the “span of time I spent compartmentalizing my experiences. Each tearful moment felt like the turn of a release valve.”

Weil’s recent career transition, which took him away from emergency care, has improved his quality of life greatly.

 “It can provide immense job satisfaction and personal fulfillment to help someone when they need it most, to provide smart and effective care at a very high level, but the balance tipped for me,” he said.

The Pitt is available to stream on Max — and, as Weil would have us believe, it’s ER-nurse approved.