Trauma: Life in the E.R.
Encyclopedia
Trauma: Life in the E.R. is a medical-based television
reality show that formerly ran on TLC from 1997 to 2002 and reruns are currently airing on Discovery Fit & Health
(DFH). At its peak, Trauma was one of TLC's top-rated shows and spawned two spin-offs, Paramedics
and Code Blue.
) and debuted in 1997. Like much of the medical-based programming on TLC (and Discovery Fit and Health as well), the show was designed as a "real-life" version of a popular U.S. TV series. In this case, Trauma was designed to capitalize on the success of the NBC
drama ER
. The show follows the cases coming through Level One trauma centers and high-profile emergency rooms around the U.S. The first season consisted of several half-hour episodes, but by 1998, the series had expanded to a full hour, allowing for more time to follow cases as well as the lives of the doctors involved.
The show had no regular cast; every week featured a different hospital and a different group of doctors. Actor Michael McGlone narrated the series. Composer Chuck Hammer
scored the series.
Most episodes centered around the physicians and nurses comprising the staff of a typical Level One trauma center, but occasionally a different type of staffer would be profiled to show their unique contributions to that specific hospital. For example, at Charity Hospital
in New Orleans, Louisiana
, the hospital's chaplain (a nun with the Sisters of Charity) was profiled in one episode, and another episode at Charity Hospital profiled the New Orleans paramedics, which was used as the pilot for the show Paramedics. Another episode followed a burn patient through his recovery at Vanderbilt University's
medical center, allowing the show to profile the co-director of the burn center and one of the burn care technicians as a change of pace from the usual ER/Trauma cases.
First-run production ended in 2002, though the show lives on in reruns on Discovery Fit and Health. TLC stopped producing new episodes largely because the show was expensive and time-consuming to produce in comparison to other reality shows (each episode took 1–2 months to shoot and 3 months to edit, though several camera crews worked simultaneously at hospitals around the country and each hospital's shooting footage was usually split into two or three episodes). In addition, new medical privacy laws forbade recording patients before they (or their next-of-kin) gave permission. Since the most of the patients were in the midst of a medical emergency, obtaining the necessary production releases became difficult or impossible. (Before the new law came into effect, Trauma's videographers would usually request permission after they had begun taping. If a patient refused permission, the cases would not be included in a program.)
The series was one of the first cinéma vérité
style programs to be shot almost entirely on hand-held MiniDV
camcorder
s by teams of videojournalists
who were responsible for both the reporting and videography.
: "Due to the graphic nature of this program, viewer discretion is advised". The warning is needed because the show does not shy away from letting the viewer see blood, guts, or even patient death. When the show debuted in 1997, such graphic presentations on television were quite rare.
Trauma was one of the first reality shows to deal with the controversial issue of health care professionals and AIDS exposure. Episodes set in San Francisco, California
dealt with openly homosexual physicians, nurses, and other health care technicians and the risks to both physicians and patients when dealing with sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS and hepatitis C. An episode set in San Antonio, Texas
featured an E.R. intern who was stuck with a needle from suturing up an illegal immigrant patient whose health history was completely unknown, including the extensive medical testing and anti-viral drugs the intern needed to take to ensure she did not contract any diseases from the patient. Another episode set in Nashville, Tennessee
featured a trauma surgical resident who was accidentally stuck with a needle while treating a patient who had shot himself after discovering he had Hepatitis C; the surgical resident was found to be negative for Hepatitis C but still went through the months of anti-viral medications to ensure he did not later develop the disease.
Episodes shot for both Trauma and Code Blue in New Orleans, Louisiana
featured Dr. Eduardo Marvez-Valls, coordinator of E.R. and Trauma Medical Residents at Charity Hospital. Marvez-Valls, whose reputation as a dedicated instructor and physician was often featured in interviews with the doctors featured in Trauma and Code Blue, was both openly homosexual (Code Blue frequently featured Marvez-Valls at his home in the French Quarter, which he shared with his longtime partner, Robert Ripley) and suffering from end-stage AIDS. Dr. Marvez-Valls did not perform tasks that would involve excessive exposure to needles, such as suturing or IV insertion, but he continued diagnosing and treating patients in the E.R. and Trauma services at Charity Hospital even after the hospital was shut down by Hurricane Katrina
, practicing medicine in tents and other temporary emergency rooms until his death from AIDS-related kidney disease in 2006 at the age of 52.
Patient privacy concerns have dogged Trauma from the beginning. In 2005, two men in Florida whose cases were featured on the show sued the producers for breach of privacy, claiming show crew and producers would disguise themselves as hospital personnel to obtain release signatures for the taped footage under false pretenses. Charles Sims, an attorney for the show's producers, has dismissed the men's claims and asserted that all releases were obtained properly.
. To make use of this footage, TLC agreed to renew Code Blue, a show originally conceived as a limited run series based on life at a single hospital, Charity Hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana
. The new version of Code Blue, now named Code Blue: Savannah, consisted of eight episodes crafted out of the unused footage from the Trauma shoot at Memorial Health Trauma Center. This version of Code Blue has a different shooting style, a different narrator, and a different narrative tone, making it more closely resemble an episode of Trauma: Life in the E.R. rather than the mix of hospital life and New Orleans local color that made up the original Code Blue.
In December 2009, TLC aired a 3-episode pilot for an emergency room reality show entitled "Emergency Level One". Focusing primarily on the doctors and surgeons, the show was produced by True Entertainment and filmed at Nashville Tennessee's Vanderbilt University Medical Center.
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
reality show that formerly ran on TLC from 1997 to 2002 and reruns are currently airing on Discovery Fit & Health
Discovery Fit & Health
Discovery Fit & Health is an American cable television network owned by Discovery Communications dedicated to fitness and health. Launched on February 1, 2011, it is the result of the merger of Discovery Health Channel and FitTV and features programs formerly found on both...
(DFH). At its peak, Trauma was one of TLC's top-rated shows and spawned two spin-offs, Paramedics
Paramedics (TV show)
Paramedics was a medical-based television reality show that ran on TLC from 1999 to 2001 and now runs infrequently on Discovery Health Channel. A spin-off of Trauma: Life in the E.R., Paramedics followed the activities of teams of EMTs and paramedics in a number of large urban centers in the...
and Code Blue.
Show history
The show was produced by NYT Television (owned by The New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
) and debuted in 1997. Like much of the medical-based programming on TLC (and Discovery Fit and Health as well), the show was designed as a "real-life" version of a popular U.S. TV series. In this case, Trauma was designed to capitalize on the success of the NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
drama ER
ER (TV series)
ER is an American medical drama television series created by novelist Michael Crichton that aired on NBC from September 19, 1994 to April 2, 2009. It was produced by Constant c Productions and Amblin Entertainment, in association with Warner Bros. Television...
. The show follows the cases coming through Level One trauma centers and high-profile emergency rooms around the U.S. The first season consisted of several half-hour episodes, but by 1998, the series had expanded to a full hour, allowing for more time to follow cases as well as the lives of the doctors involved.
The show had no regular cast; every week featured a different hospital and a different group of doctors. Actor Michael McGlone narrated the series. Composer Chuck Hammer
Chuck Hammer
Chuck Hammer is an American guitarist and Emmy nominated digital film composer, known for seminal guitar-synth with Lou Reed, David Bowie, and Guitarchitecture....
scored the series.
Most episodes centered around the physicians and nurses comprising the staff of a typical Level One trauma center, but occasionally a different type of staffer would be profiled to show their unique contributions to that specific hospital. For example, at Charity Hospital
Charity Hospital
Charity Hospital was one of two teaching hospitals which were part of the Medical Center of Louisiana at New Orleans . Three weeks after the events of Hurricane Katrina, then Governor Kathleen Blanco said that Charity Hospital would not reopen, even though the military had scrubbed the building to...
in New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The New Orleans metropolitan area has a population of 1,235,650 as of 2009, the 46th largest in the USA. The New Orleans – Metairie – Bogalusa combined statistical area has a population...
, the hospital's chaplain (a nun with the Sisters of Charity) was profiled in one episode, and another episode at Charity Hospital profiled the New Orleans paramedics, which was used as the pilot for the show Paramedics. Another episode followed a burn patient through his recovery at Vanderbilt University's
Vanderbilt University
Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1873, the university is named for shipping and rail magnate "Commodore" Cornelius Vanderbilt, who provided Vanderbilt its initial $1 million endowment despite having never been to the...
medical center, allowing the show to profile the co-director of the burn center and one of the burn care technicians as a change of pace from the usual ER/Trauma cases.
First-run production ended in 2002, though the show lives on in reruns on Discovery Fit and Health. TLC stopped producing new episodes largely because the show was expensive and time-consuming to produce in comparison to other reality shows (each episode took 1–2 months to shoot and 3 months to edit, though several camera crews worked simultaneously at hospitals around the country and each hospital's shooting footage was usually split into two or three episodes). In addition, new medical privacy laws forbade recording patients before they (or their next-of-kin) gave permission. Since the most of the patients were in the midst of a medical emergency, obtaining the necessary production releases became difficult or impossible. (Before the new law came into effect, Trauma's videographers would usually request permission after they had begun taping. If a patient refused permission, the cases would not be included in a program.)
The series was one of the first cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité
Cinéma vérité is a style of documentary filmmaking, combining naturalistic techniques with stylized cinematic devices of editing and camerawork, staged set-ups, and the use of the camera to provoke subjects. It is also known for taking a provocative stance toward its topics.There are subtle yet...
style programs to be shot almost entirely on hand-held MiniDV
DV
DV is a format for the digital recording and playing back of digital video. The DV codec was launched in 1995 with joint efforts of leading producers of video camcorders....
camcorder
Camcorder
A camcorder is an electronic device that combines a video camera and a video recorder into one unit. Equipment manufacturers do not seem to have strict guidelines for the term usage...
s by teams of videojournalists
Video journalism
Video journalism or videojournalism is a form of broadcast journalism, where the production of video content in which the journalist shoots, edits and often presents his or her own material....
who were responsible for both the reporting and videography.
Controversy
Trauma was one of TLC's most controversial shows from the beginning because it did not sugar-coat or downplay the violent nature of the cases that usually end up in a big-city trauma center. The show carries a disclaimer at the beginning and on the opening frames of every return-from-commercial bumperCommercial bumper
In broadcasting, a commercial bumper, ident bumper or break-bumper is a brief announcement, usually two to 15 seconds that can contain a voice over, placed between a pause in the program and its commercial break, and vice versa...
: "Due to the graphic nature of this program, viewer discretion is advised". The warning is needed because the show does not shy away from letting the viewer see blood, guts, or even patient death. When the show debuted in 1997, such graphic presentations on television were quite rare.
Trauma was one of the first reality shows to deal with the controversial issue of health care professionals and AIDS exposure. Episodes set in San Francisco, California
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
dealt with openly homosexual physicians, nurses, and other health care technicians and the risks to both physicians and patients when dealing with sexually transmitted diseases like AIDS and hepatitis C. An episode set in San Antonio, Texas
San Antonio, Texas
San Antonio is the seventh-largest city in the United States of America and the second-largest city within the state of Texas, with a population of 1.33 million. Located in the American Southwest and the south–central part of Texas, the city serves as the seat of Bexar County. In 2011,...
featured an E.R. intern who was stuck with a needle from suturing up an illegal immigrant patient whose health history was completely unknown, including the extensive medical testing and anti-viral drugs the intern needed to take to ensure she did not contract any diseases from the patient. Another episode set in Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...
featured a trauma surgical resident who was accidentally stuck with a needle while treating a patient who had shot himself after discovering he had Hepatitis C; the surgical resident was found to be negative for Hepatitis C but still went through the months of anti-viral medications to ensure he did not later develop the disease.
Episodes shot for both Trauma and Code Blue in New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The New Orleans metropolitan area has a population of 1,235,650 as of 2009, the 46th largest in the USA. The New Orleans – Metairie – Bogalusa combined statistical area has a population...
featured Dr. Eduardo Marvez-Valls, coordinator of E.R. and Trauma Medical Residents at Charity Hospital. Marvez-Valls, whose reputation as a dedicated instructor and physician was often featured in interviews with the doctors featured in Trauma and Code Blue, was both openly homosexual (Code Blue frequently featured Marvez-Valls at his home in the French Quarter, which he shared with his longtime partner, Robert Ripley) and suffering from end-stage AIDS. Dr. Marvez-Valls did not perform tasks that would involve excessive exposure to needles, such as suturing or IV insertion, but he continued diagnosing and treating patients in the E.R. and Trauma services at Charity Hospital even after the hospital was shut down by Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina
Hurricane Katrina of the 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a powerful Atlantic hurricane. It is the costliest natural disaster, as well as one of the five deadliest hurricanes, in the history of the United States. Among recorded Atlantic hurricanes, it was the sixth strongest overall...
, practicing medicine in tents and other temporary emergency rooms until his death from AIDS-related kidney disease in 2006 at the age of 52.
Patient privacy concerns have dogged Trauma from the beginning. In 2005, two men in Florida whose cases were featured on the show sued the producers for breach of privacy, claiming show crew and producers would disguise themselves as hospital personnel to obtain release signatures for the taped footage under false pretenses. Charles Sims, an attorney for the show's producers, has dismissed the men's claims and asserted that all releases were obtained properly.
Life after cancellation
When Trauma was canceled by TLC in 2002, NYT Television still had unused footage from a 3-month shooting session at Memorial Health Trauma Center in Savannah, GeorgiaSavannah, Georgia
Savannah is the largest city and the county seat of Chatham County, in the U.S. state of Georgia. Established in 1733, the city of Savannah was the colonial capital of the Province of Georgia and later the first state capital of Georgia. Today Savannah is an industrial center and an important...
. To make use of this footage, TLC agreed to renew Code Blue, a show originally conceived as a limited run series based on life at a single hospital, Charity Hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans, Louisiana
New Orleans is a major United States port and the largest city and metropolitan area in the state of Louisiana. The New Orleans metropolitan area has a population of 1,235,650 as of 2009, the 46th largest in the USA. The New Orleans – Metairie – Bogalusa combined statistical area has a population...
. The new version of Code Blue, now named Code Blue: Savannah, consisted of eight episodes crafted out of the unused footage from the Trauma shoot at Memorial Health Trauma Center. This version of Code Blue has a different shooting style, a different narrator, and a different narrative tone, making it more closely resemble an episode of Trauma: Life in the E.R. rather than the mix of hospital life and New Orleans local color that made up the original Code Blue.
In December 2009, TLC aired a 3-episode pilot for an emergency room reality show entitled "Emergency Level One". Focusing primarily on the doctors and surgeons, the show was produced by True Entertainment and filmed at Nashville Tennessee's Vanderbilt University Medical Center.