'The Pitt': Long Island's ER doctors and nurses tell why they love the Emmy-winning medical drama

Dr. Matthew Harris has seen a lot during the past 13 years as a pediatric emergency medicine physician for Northwell's Cohen Children's Medical Center in New Hyde Park. Far more than most people, and far too much for most of them too. On any given day at New York's largest pediatric hospital, there are various "high acuity" cases that come through triage or the ambulance bay, like falls, sepsis, seizures, car accidents, drug overdoses and suicide attempts.

He occasionally has to tell a parent that their child didn't survive. Because that's infinitely harder than it sounds, Harris, like anyone, needs a release now and then, or just something to help him assimilate the human tragedy he witnesses on a far-too-regular basis.

Enter "The Pitt," the HBO Max series, now in its sophomore season, about doctors and nurses in the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, and set during a 15-hour shift.

Harris says he "grew up watching 'ER' " — the "first time meeting my wife in college, it was 'ER,' ice cream and Thursdays at 10" — then a couple years back, after learning that Noah Wyle was going to star in a new medical show, curiosity overwhelmed the need for sleep. Tuning in, he was immediately hooked. His TV life, such as it is, still revolves around Thursday evenings, but now an hour earlier, when one new weekly episode is released.

Just as they are for other "Pitt"-infatuated doctors and nurses, the "whys" of this particular devotion are complicated. The verisimilitude, the pace, the sheer breathtaking entertainment value of an Emmy-winning drama — by critical consensus the best show on television — are all factors. But there's something else.

Harris recalls "there was a scene last season where Dr. Michael "Robby" Robinavitch [Wyle] had to tell the parents that their son is brain dead after a fentanyl overdose [Season 1, Episode 3], but first he's trying to build the case that their son is not going to survive. When the mom picks up on that, there's this visceral scream. Even talking about that makes the hair on my arms stand up. At some point, we all have to tell parents their child has died, and there was that scream on the show, and then the silence that flows out of that when the whole ER stands still for a minute. It's so hyperrealistic and it's why I continue to watch, for this immediate sense of catharsis."

SEARINGLY AUTHENTIC WORKPLACE DRAMA

Since the dawn of television, there have been workplace dramas about lawyers, detectives, advertising executives, media moguls, firefighters and chefs. Most are about as authentic as the Hollywood backlot where they were filmed. "Catharsis," for the most part, has rarely been a viewer option. But "The Pitt" has been an exception — the one workplace drama that's so vivid, and so searingly authentic, that the professional class it reflects can't look away because they see themselves reflected back.

"A great show," says Dr. Jay Itzkowitz, chair of emergency medicine at Mount Sinai South Nassau in Oceanside, who — during a 25-year run there — has rarely been asked for his critical assessment of a prime-time series.

"I would say this is by far the most accurate portrayal of what my life is like on shift that I can come up with," says Dr. Christopher Caspers, chair of emergency medicine at NYU Langone Hospital in Mineola.

I would say this is by far the most accurate portrayal of what my life is like on shift that I can come up with.

— Dr. Christopher Caspers, chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine, NYU Langone in Mineola

Dr. Jillian Leibowitz, an emergency medicine attending physician at Stony Brook Medicine, says "The Pitt" "just kind of validates what you feel every day at work. We all have cases we will never forget and the cases that we would love to forget. The show does a really good job with that."

MAKING TIME TO WATCH

Keep in mind, this is a television show, and since when do real-life emergency department (ED) doctors and nurses have time for TV? But in interviews with those real-life ones — at Long Island emergency departments that are among the busiest in the nation — they say they've made time for this. At long last, they say, this is a bona fide prime-time series that actually explains to family members, or to the general public, what they do for a living. To varying degrees, they say their own EDs face the same challenges as "The Pitt's," from overcrowding, and "boarding" — keeping patients in the ED because there's no bed for them anywhere else — to handling patients who have become either more demanding or (even) unruly, especially since COVID.

And it lays bare the mental health challenges of the profession — growing ones, they say, that go unnoticed by the general public. Robinavitch's two-season PTSD arc has elements that aren't all that different from the emotional challenges each of them has to cope with on a daily basis too, they say.

"Burnout's a huge question in emergency medicine that's come up over the last few years and to some degree it's almost inevitable in this field because EM [emergency medicine] takes a huge emotional, mental and physical toll on you," Leibowitz says. "You're seeing patients every day on the worst day of their lives and that obviously weighs on you over time."

"The Pitt," she says, has finally let viewers in on this professional secret.

LAUNCHING AT A FRAUGHT MOMENT

To these fans, "The Pitt" launched when it was least expected, and when it was most needed. "No one talked about medical TV shows, ever, then a month or two after it came out [in January 2025], I was getting texts from friends and colleagues who were saying this is too real," says Somair Malik, an ED doctor and fellowship program director for Stony Brook's Resuscitation & Emergency Critical Care training program. "That's what got me into this. I was literally looking at how our [ED] is set up [on the show], and the cases are exactly the same ones we deal with. It was like I was watching myself."

"There's no take-your-kids-to-work day, obviously, and I can't walk around the [ED] with my spouse," says Caspers, of NYU Langone in Mineola. "But to have this level of insight into what I do on a day-to-day basis, and be able to sit on the couch and have my daughter who's 13 and son who's 9 say, 'Dad, is it really like that?' and being able to say 'Yeah, it actually is,' is what I like most. My family could finally see what it's like to see me working."

That's what got me into this. I was literally looking at how our [ED] is set up [on the show], and the cases are exactly the same ones we deal with. It was like I was watching myself.

— Somair Malik, ED doctor and fellowship program director for Stony Brook's Resuscitation & Emergency Critical Care training program

Doctors and nurses say "The Pitt," by launching at an especially fraught moment in EDs across the country, revealed what Christine DeSanno, chief of the NYU Langone emergency department in Patchogue calls the job's "pain points."

"Especially post-COVID, everyone has an uneasiness with what medical care is — how it's provided, what emergency departments are like [and] what workplace violence is like," she says.

STRESSORS ARE HIGH

DeSanno says "The Pitt" offers an uncannily authentic snapshot at a specific moment in time where "emergency departments are in flux, and stressors are high and people are not having as great an experience on both sides, patients as well as health care workers, because patients have lost trust in multiple pillars of the health care system. That really puts stress on all of us [but] we're still humans, we still have feelings, we still have to process trauma."

Especially post-COVID, everyone has an uneasiness with what medical care is — how it's provided, what emergency departments are like [and] what workplace violence is like.

— Dr. Christine DeSanno, chief of the NYU Langone emergency department in Patchogue

VIVID 'MICRO-MOMENTS'

The first season was set during the anniversary of the death (from COVID) of Robby's mentor. A mass casualty event — the shooting — filled the latter half of the season. In the season's climactic scene (Episode 13, "7:00 P.M."), he suffered a complete breakdown. Robby only pulled himself together after being helped to his feet by the most unlikely of saviors — the sweet-natured first-year resident, Whitaker, aka "Huckleberry" (Gerran Howell). 

It's heightened reality, of course — one of those scorching made-for-TV scenes that once seen, few can forget — but Long Island's doctors and nurses say it's the number of "micro-moments" in "The Pitt" they remember most vividly, or can most relate to in their own daily lives. When those are seen in aggregate, Robby's personal tragedy doesn't look all that far-fetched.

Maggie Hastings, a registered nurse at Oceanside's Mount Sinai — which gets 75,000 patients a year in the ED, or about 200 per day — captures the dramatic tension of both the show and her real-world workplace with this: "You come to work and you're in a constant state of stress for 12 hours a day because you never know what's coming in through that door," she says. "Patients or family members might be screaming at us in the hallway while we could be dealing with a cardiac arrest in the next room where we either stabilize them or they pass away. We then need to take five seconds to rewire our brain, then go right in to the next patient. The general public doesn't understand how much of a strain that puts on [our] mental health."

Stony Brook's Malik says the job "isn't just about being tired or overworked [but] it's the cumulative exposure, the little stab wounds that happen day by day. Those paper cuts add up, the grief, the trauma, the moral distress, the sleep circadian rhythm dysfunction, the system strains, the misses you may have, the things that you catch, but nobody else notices — and the admiration you never receive for just doing the right things. Dr. Robby, to me, is an embodiment of all of those factors because he's carrying so much unresolved pain, especially around the death of his mentor and the broader scars of working through the pandemic, which we all worked through."

Because "The Pitt" has finally let the rest of the world see what ED docs and nurses see every day, has that led to a shift in public attitude, or at least a glimmer of awareness about just how incredibly hard this job is?

That's among the oldest of questions in TV — can any great show make a positive, real-world difference? — and among the hardest to answer. Mount Sinai's Itzkowitz isn't sure either but "I'm hoping it has that effect. We're working 24/7, nights, weekends, holidays. We're doing the best we can. We do it because we want to help — but bear with us while we're going through our day so we can take care of everyone.

The one thing I hope this show can do is shed some light on what people are going through.

— Jay Itzkowitz, chair of the Department of Emergency Medicine, Mount Sinai South Nassau in Oceanside

"The one thing I hope this show can do," he adds, "is shed some light on what people are going through."