Plot Synopsis

From operating rooms to end-of-life meetings, BOSTON MED explores the culture of doctors and nurses and the conversations that happen outside the patient's earshot at three Boston-area hospitals (Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital, and Children's Hospital Boston). The doctors and nurses depicted in this series are among America's best and brightest, but medicine is as much art as it is science -- and random bad luck can trump even the most carefully calculated treatment. Every hospital knows that good doctors can make mistakes and routine surgeries can go horribly wrong, and this series shows medical failures as well as the triumphs. In one episode, a pediatric heart surgeon perform a complex operation on a newborn that goes badly awry. In another episode, a veteran surgeon explodes at young residents who have put a patient on an unnecessary medication. BOSTON MED also examines the emotional toll that demanding medical careers exact on these caregivers' personal lives -- crushing financial debt, years of apprenticeship, daylight hours spent in windowless hospital rooms, and too little time for family and friends.