The Quincy, M.E. Homage
As I get older some of the most acute examples of aging are when I am teaching medical students. I have to stop making cultural references that are met with blank looks. (Note to self – these students could have been born in 1990 for crying out loud!) The genius that is Quincy falls into this category. Most of them were not born when Quincy was in his pomp - though he is still lurking on some ITV channels. For those reading this who can feel themselves staring back at me with that polite but vacant expression – try here.
Quincy, M.E. is the main reason I am a doctor. But before I tell of that: kick back and enjoy the classic opening theme. It is a proper little earworm too- I’ll be humming it for days now. Doo doo-doodoo doo dooo!
I always wanted to be a forensic pathologist. Sitting up late at night in my pyjamas wallowing in the explicit use of medical jargon. I may scoff at my own naivety but the whole pathologist-cum-detective genre is somewhat more sophisticated nowadays. I caught a portion of Silent Witness on BBC 1 last night - maggot-riddled corpses, needles in eyeballs. Good grief, I was nearly sick.
Back in 1992 I was very quickly disillusioned about my prospects as a pathologist after about 5 minutes into our first histology lesson. Squinting down microscopes at pinkish-purplish blobs with my defective colour vision (I’ll blog about that some other time) meant pathology quickly lost its glamourish associations with Quincy.
Phenomenally tenacious clinical skills and an ability to sniff out a corporate murder from the other side of the county was just the start of it. He was also a bit of a one for the ladies and he enjoyed a good rant at bureaucracy. What a legend.
I used to watch Quincy on and off on late night TV. It is interesting how Quincy provided a template for the later “Path detective” type shows by his tendency to act as an out-of-the-lab sleuth. I always used to think of him as kind of the medical equivalent of Columbo, though Quincy was a lot more irascible. And his appeal for the ladies was a bit of a mystery! The modern male TV Patho-’tecs are, of course, rather more youthful and handsome.
Talking of TV Patho-’tecs, I reckon Silent Witness has been greatly improved by the departure of Amanda Burton. I find the Prof Leo Dalton character much less annoying – but then I would say that, as I am a middle-aged bloke.
Another question that springs to mind is whether we think the TV Patho-’tec shows are more or less unnerving than Gunther von Hagens’ real-life TV autopsy shows?
Finally, I agree about the problems with generationally unsuitable TV references for the students. I have to remind myself not to mention Ged Mercurio’s Cardiac Arrest. Actually, a straw poll last yr revealed that the only “medical shows” most of the students ever watched were Casualty and (less commonly) ER. No GPs in either of those, of course.
There was a quote on wikipedia from Peep Show – “Columbo… shits all over Quincy”. I missed that episode which is just as well as I am moderately scandalised having never been a big fan of Columbo.
The main show my students refer to seems to be Scrubs – not strictly a medical show like the others but enjoyable nonetheless. No GPs in sight of course but JD does show some quite interesting flashes of patient-orientated behaviour! I thought it could be the ideal vehicle for an interesting comms skills session…
Regularly use ‘scrubs’ for teaching on our GP VTS scheme. Some of the stuff in the ‘green wing’ is also excellent for teaching purposes.
One of my colleagues uses loads of clips – going all the way back to ‘why doctors prefer to smoke camels’ right through to Sir Launcelot Spratt. There are some real nuggets there.
I saw Quincy once; I think it was early morning on ITV3 over Christmas holidays. Quincy had to solve the mystery of a cardiac surgeon’s high fatality rate. Diagnosis? The consultant wasn’t performing the bypasses; his incompetent juniors were!
When I was a young impressionable teen E.R. was in its hey day. I wonder if that encouraged me to pursue a life in scrubs?
Yes, had forgotten about Scrubs. An interesting aside is that when the first series appeared the programme makers made a bunch of references to having been heavily influenced by The House of God, which I guess must be one of the more famous “what it’s really like as a junior hospital doctor” books ever written. It was certainly the book Mrs Dr Aust used to swear by.
I quite like the surrealist humour in Scrubs. Given my penchant for joke musical ditties, and generally juvenile sense of humour, you probably won’t be surprised to hear that this is one of my favourite bits. Was a great hit with the 3 yr old Jr Aust too, who went through a phase of demanding that it be sung to her every bedtime.
Love the Poo Song. I remember reading The House of God when I was a student. Despite being an American novel some of the terms used were is still in fairly common usage when I was junior doctoring – getting beds up to ‘orthopaedic’ height (ie high enough to cause a fractured hip requiring a bed blocking elderly patient to be transferred to the orthopaedic team). “Buffing and turfing” is another I remember.
Mostly black humour I know rather than being fact but also deeply cynical and worryingly still relevant to how hospital medicine can treat people 30 years after it was written.