Li Yu
Medical drama’s Welcome to Maile Village is a major theme work. It is a literary drama broadcast at special nodes such as the 10th anniversary of the "the belt and road initiative" initiative, the 60th anniversary of the dispatch of foreign aid medical teams from China, and the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Tanzania. The drama tells the story of China’s foreign aid medical team saving lives and building deep friendship with local people in Africa. From the perspective of medical drama, aiding Africa to medical drama is a major feature of domestic medical drama.
2023 is a big year for medical drama. Many idol dramas focus on medical staff, such as I heard that you like me, my earthly fireworks, and healing lovers. Serious medical career dramas are frequent, including White Castle, Ask Your Heart, Extraordinary Doctor and Welcome to Mai Le Village. In particular, "Ask Your Heart" scored 8.4 points for Douban, which became a new high made in medical drama for many years.
Medical care is closely related to the interests of ordinary people. Medical drama is also a rare theme that can radiate to all levels of society, from life and death to the relationship between doctors and patients, the medical system, and then to all beings in the world. Medical drama’s people’s livelihood genes and social attributes determine that it should be medical drama’s pursuit to bridge social contradictions, protect social conscience and convey warmth and hope, rather than chasing "explosions".
The lack of explosions: medical drama’s tortuous March
Medical drama is a branch of workplace drama, which takes the hospital as the story background, the medical workers as the protagonist, and the medical staff saving lives as the main plot of the story, focusing on presenting the daily work of medical workers, the relationship between colleagues and their patients.
Domestic medical drama can be traced back to the Hippocratic Oath with only two episodes in 1986. The play has an excellent reputation, but due to the creative conditions, medical drama has not become a climate. In 2001, "It’s All Angels’ Trouble" was a romantic idol drama set in a hospital, and medical staff began to become the main characters on the screen. Never Give Up in 2001 is a real medical drama. The Final Diagnosis in 2004, Infinite Life in 2005 and The Lancet in 2009 were broadcast in medical drama, and medical drama gradually matured.
The Doctor’s Kindness in 2010 and Mind in 2012 are landmark works made in medical drama. The Doctor’s Benevolence confronts the contradiction between doctors and patients and eulogizes the doctor’s benevolence, which has been highly praised and won the first prize of the flying prize long TV series; Directed by Yang Yang, written by Zhang Jiayi and starring Christina in 1966, Mind is the first widely discussed medical drama in China, which also makes medical drama a mainstream drama type.
After Mind, medical drama, which is the focus of production, has increased, with more diverse themes and styles. Typical examples include Distance to Love in 2013, Obstetrician, Obstetrician and Gynecology of Love in 2014, Obstetrician Male Doctor, Young Doctor, Story of Emergency Room in 2015, Growing Up, Emergency Doctor, Pediatrician Justices Seeker in 2017, Fall in love with you and cure me in 2019. Domestic medical drama involves various departments, including surgery, emergency department, obstetrics and gynecology, children, psychiatry, etc. Even domestic medical drama has a scarce theme in foreign medical drama: medical aid for foreign countries, such as Take a Deep Breath Together. It is a little regrettable that so far, there has not been a medical drama with explosive broadcast effect, and even from 2013 to 2022, there is no domestic medical drama with a douban score of 8.
The year 2023 will be the turning point of domestic medical drama from quantitative change to qualitative change-a large number, different themes and high quality. For more than ten years, medical drama made in China has matured and its creative paradigm has gradually stabilized.
Presentation of Professionalism: medical drama’s Creative Consensus
As a medical workplace drama, the professional presentation of the profession should have been the foundation of medical drama. As the audience commented on Grey’s Anatomy, "Every chest and abdominal cavity are wide open, and every episode is like a Wikipedia, which broadcasts the explanations of the terms heart valve, duodenal perforation and cardiopulmonary bypass." However, for a long time before, medical drama did not regard "professionalism" as a creative consensus.
On the one hand, the creators don’t know enough about workplace dramas and medical drama, so they can’t accurately grasp the aesthetic principles of this type of dramas. In the end, medical drama often falls in love under the guise of medical treatment, or performs family ethics.
On the other hand, medical drama is a branch of workplace drama which is very difficult to create. Medical drama has a very high threshold, and non-medical professional film and television teams are at a loss about medical knowledge. At the same time, the filming of the operation process needs the support of the fine level of film and television industrialization. After all, many medical devices are very expensive, so it is impossible for the team to buy real devices, and they need to shoot with realistic imitations.
Because of the lack of knowledge and literacy of the main creator, medical drama frequently made mistakes, misled the general audience and was criticized by medical workers. In 2017, the medical community "Lilac Garden" surveyed more than 2,000 doctors, 94% of whom had watched medical TV dramas, and 85.8% of doctors had found mistakes when watching medical TV dramas. Including "no concept of sterility", "I took my glasses with sterile gloves", "I took the film backwards", "I took the CT film and said it was magnetic resonance imaging", "The feeling that the doctor can always put the white coat out of the trench coat without fastening" and "No matter what patient dies suddenly, he will be electrocuted when he comes up".
With more ridicule, the consensus that "professionalism comes first" has gradually been established in medical drama. More and more professionals have joined the screenwriter team, and they have also been supported by professionals in the creative process. In this way, the professional level of medical drama has been significantly improved in recent years.
For example, the screenwriter of "Everything about Dr. Tang" graduated from Wuhan University with a bachelor’s degree in clinical medicine, and went to Beijing to study art only with a master’s degree. Therefore, more than 70% of the episodes of this drama took place in the hospital. White Castle is adapted from an autobiographical novel of the same name by Wang Chenggang, deputy chief physician of anzhen hospital Emergency and Critical Care Center. From the script creation to the shooting of "Ask Your Heart", there are more than 150 senior doctors who form an advisory group, and the creative team will ask experts for advice at any time if they encounter any problems. The main creative team built a real scene of the hospital covering an area of 8,000 square meters, used nearly 200 conventional equipment such as micropumps, ventilators and echocardiography, and rented high-tech medical equipment such as ECMO and IVUS …
It can be said that since 2020, the professionalism of domestic medical drama has made a qualitative leap.
The growth of doctors: medical drama’s "life and death lesson"
It is generally believed that the "double P" principle is the two wheels that drive the medical workplace drama. The first is "professional", that is, the professionalism we mentioned earlier; The second is "personal", that is, personalization. medical drama must focus on the personal growth of doctors.
Every doctor has to undergo the test of "courses" other than medical courses, such as life and death courses. Hospital is a place of hope-it brings many patients back from the brink of death, and the hospital is also a place of despair-there are inevitably too many deaths here. For every new doctor, the medical school has taught them the skills of saving lives, but it may not have taught them the death lesson-how to face the death of patients and how to accept the death of patients. This is the first level that new doctors must pass.
In "White Castle", the new doctors Wang Yangming and Liu Fei were both scared when they suffered the death of a patient for the first time-they were shocked that death was so horrible. "A person who was thinking a few minutes ago, still moving, and even talking to you breathed his last breath, and then gradually became cold and became a lifeless body." After all, doctors must learn to face death calmly and calmly. If you are immersed in pain, "this kind of pain makes you have no courage, and you can’t even do this job in the face of the next patient. Accept the reality, accept the reality that you can’t do anything, and don’t have any emotional color. " Being unemotional is not "apathy", but being more diligent in profession and more serious in attitude, and always having the courage to know that there are tigers in the mountains and favor tigers in the mountains, helping every patient to resist death as much as possible.
It is a doctor’s bounden duty to "heal the wounded and rescue the dying". However, in the specific work practice, doctors often encounter the question of "save or not". For example, in The Extraordinary Doctor, Chen Hui, a new doctor, was on his way to the hospital for an interview when he met a little boy who was hit by high-altitude glass and was dying. Chen Hui judged that the little boy had pneumothorax and needed immediate treatment. He immediately ran to the convenience store, took the art knife, disposable gloves and Erguotou, disinfected it with Erguotou, and gave the little boy a closed chest drainage on the spot. This is a very thrilling emergency rescue. After all, the scene is not a sterile environment at all. Once the chest is opened in the street, the consequences will be unimaginable.
Every operation, the hospital has some procedures to follow. For example, the interns in the ward have no right to dispose, and the tracheotomy needs to be consulted. For example, the operation requires high environment. For example, some operations require the consent of family members … If the doctor violates these procedures-although the starting point is to save people, once the patient has any consequences, the responsibility will have to be borne by the doctor, and the family members may be brought to court, lose money, and may be dismissed. If faced with such a situation, should doctors "save people or protect themselves"? In dramas such as Thank You Doctor and Ask Your Heart, some doctors respect the process, while others think that saving people is the first priority-it is of course important to follow the process, but we can’t let it get stuck in life.
The hospital is a pure white world, but this does not mean that there is no calculation of interests or disputes between right and wrong in the hospital, and it does not mean that doctors and nurses have no selfishness. Where there is a workplace, there are "rivers and lakes", there is the distribution of interests, and there is a conflict between the collective and the individual. Welcome to Maile Village is a major theme of medical drama, but it cuts into the narrative with a grounded doctor’s interest dispute. Ma Jia, the first surgeon in thoracic surgery played by Jin Dong, thought that his professional title was assured and the position of director of thoracic surgery was also in the bag. Unexpectedly, in the end, "both ends failed." At this time, Ma Jia put personal interests first. His initial motivation for joining the medical aid team in Africa was not pure. However, in the process of aiding Africa, Ma Jia gradually realized the collective significance, recovered her initial intention of becoming a doctor, balanced the collective interests and personal interests, and achieved another personal growth.
Through the growth of doctors, the audience deeply realized the doctor’s dilemma, and then empathized with the doctor’s choice, and gained inspiration from it.
The Perfect Doctor: medical drama’s Ideal Call
There are growing doctors in medical dramas, and there is often a perfect doctor who is like a needle in the sea-he is the guide and role model for new doctors, and also medical drama’s imagination and call for ideal doctors.
The "perfection" of the perfect doctor is not the perfection of labeling and shouting slogans, but the firm guardian of their initial intention to become a doctor in the face of the temptation of interests. As a medical drama’s line said, "This is a cost-effective era. All relationships are evaluated by efficiency and interests, and responsibilities and obligations deteriorate into unreasonable sacrifices. Even public welfare and goodwill have to be knocked on the calculator." Even so, Do not forget your initiative mind, the ideal doctor, said, "You should have a conscience in medicine, have confidence in surgery, and be sincere to patients."
As early as 2010, Zhong Lixing, played by Xie Junhao, made many viewers unforgettable. He has superb medical skills, cold outside and hot inside, awe-inspiring justice, chivalrous and soft-hearted, broad-minded, and never gives in to money and power … He is the spiritual leader of many doctors, and he can always remain independent and sober in the face of cross-flow desires.
In Mind, Liu Chenxi played by Zhang Jiayi is also a perfect healer. He has always adhered to the principle of "benevolence and benevolence", but his own daughter is suffering from renal failure and is waiting for a chance to change her kidney. It is not that I have never met a suitable kidney source, but "any doctor will not give up saving lives because of other things before the operating table." In the face of more urgent rescue, the daughter’s kidney source is also "something else." Fortunately, one good deed deserves another. "Luck also has a name, called selflessness. If we live in an environment where everyone is for me, then I am willing to do it for everyone. "
In Welcome to Maile Village, Zu Feng plays Jiang Daqiao as a noble healer. Just after three years of border aid, he was duty-bound to join the African medical team when it needed him. Because of his dedication to the medical cause, he owed money to his family, his marriage broke down, and he finally had a happy time with his daughter and separated. But where the collective needs him, he always stands up without hesitation.
A perfect doctor is a major feature of medical drama made in China. Only under the socialist medical system can we have so many medical staff who are "particularly capable of fighting, suffering and dedication". Although the medical system still needs to be improved, and the contradiction between doctors and nurses still exists, the existence of "perfect doctors" always highlights the lofty sense of the medical profession and always reminds medical staff of their sense of mission-"doctors are the industries that make heroes."
Warm transmission: medical drama’s positive intention
Medical drama, which has been made in China for a long time, is often criticized by critics, who think that this type of drama is not worth shooting without explosions, or deny the progress of medical drama, which is made in China. Domestic medical drama, why is it difficult to explode?
The fundamental reason is that they weaken the contradiction. Specifically, medical drama’s "contradiction" has three aspects: first, the workplace contradiction between doctors, such as the struggle between factions and interests; Second, the contradiction between doctors and patients, which extends the "exposure" of the medical system; Third, through the patient’s sentient beings, it shows the suffering of ordinary families when they encounter diseases and reflects social contradictions.
The creator is not incapable of intensifying and amplifying contradictions. At the beginning of the new century, there was a medical drama whose main purpose was to expose the black, such as Behind the Red Cross in 2005. But this creative tendency is not worth encouraging. First, unlike private medical care in developed countries, China is dominated by public medical care, and the division of interests and factional infighting do not conform to the general situation of public hospitals in China. Secondly, under China’s medical system, doctors and patients are allies and comrades-in-arms. Enlarging the contradiction between doctors and patients and transferring the shortcomings of the medical system to doctors will not only lead to the occurrence of malignant cases such as medical injuries, but also lead to the loss of medical students, and the final consequence will be borne by patients. Thirdly, a serious illness does bring great suffering to ordinary families, but in a documentary like "On Earth" Chinese Doctors, we can still see the kindness, warmth and courage in suffering-this can bring strength to families troubled by the shadow of the disease. If medical drama exaggerates suffering and sadness, it will crush the inner defenses of some patients and their families.
Therefore, the domestic medical drama is not only an entertainment work, but also a social work, and it should have a positive intention-to eulogize the light, not to amplify the darkness; To bridge contradictions, not intensify them; To convey hope, not despair-even at the expense of drama and topicality.
Compared with making explosions, it is more important for medical drama to stick to the correct idea and convey more hope and warmth to the world. Medical drama, who has a good reputation in the past two years, has such a warm texture from Everything about Dr. Tang, White Castle, Ask Your Heart, Extraordinary Doctor and Welcome to Mai Le Village. It can understand the difficulties of doctors, and strive to popularize "doctors are not omnipotent" and "there are still too many difficulties in modern medicine", hoping that patients can get out of the cognitive misunderstanding of "spending money to cure" and reduce misunderstanding and hostility towards doctors.
They also saw the difficulties of countless patients. "There is only one disease in the world, called poverty disease." Some patients have neither medical insurance nor agricultural insurance, and once they are seriously ill, they will go bankrupt. How to improve the coverage of basic medical insurance? Uneven distribution of high-quality medical resources has objectively caused the burden on the top three hospitals, and it is also extravagant for outpatient doctors to fully communicate with patients. How to balance medical resources?
These warm medical drama, let us see the dilemma of both sides-this dilemma can not be completely eliminated for a while, doctors may still be very tired, and some patients will still be very bitter; These warm medical drama convey to us the courage to face, challenge and overcome difficulties-we must constantly solve personal problems through the optimization and improvement of the system; These warm medical drama encourage doctors and patients to put themselves in other’s shoes, care for each other and understand each other, so as to work together to overcome diseases. This is the glorious responsibility and beautiful pursuit of medical drama.
