‘The Resident’ confronts toll of pandemic on health care workers
Critical care doctor helped write Season 4 premiere episode of FOX show
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}When "The Resident" returned on Tuesday night, the medical drama series didn't shy away from addressing the coronavirus pandemic.
Dr. Daniela Lamas, a critical care physician in Boston, Mass., who has consulted on the show for two seasons and co-wrote the premiere episode, felt a deep sense of obligation to depict how health care workers are risking their lives to save others.
She told Fox News, "Medical shows take leeway and need to take leeway for the purpose of drama.... and I think it's okay to make those sort of cheats for drama [but] I think that there is a need to be more accurate in the setting of COVID, in a world where simple acts such as, you know, strapping a piece of fabric to your face become extraordinarily politicized."
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Lamas added how the doctors, nurses, and medical staff featured on the show are "modeling behavior in a way that is clear and consistent."
Dr. Daniela Lamas, a writer for the medical television drama 'The Resident.' (AP Photo/Charles Krupav)
She wanted to pay attention to the smallest of details, such as how phones are kept in Ziploc bags to ensure the virus doesn't spread by using devices.
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Lamas said this season the characters on "The Resident" represent all of us struggling during a difficult year.
"[We have to] make sure that the people that we love will be there when we are able to return for our own events, we need to continue to do what we know, to wear those masks, to distance," she said.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}L-R: Emily VanCamp, Manish Dayal and Matt Czuchry in full PPE during the premiere episode of 'The Resident.' (Guy D'Alema/FOX)
Other U.S. medical dramas, "The Good Doctor," "Chicago Med" and "Grey’s Anatomy," have focused on the pandemic’s impact on health care workers this season. On "Grey's," main character Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) is in critical care fighting the novel virus.
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"The Resident" was among the productions that donated to real health care workers the masks that would have been used as props and continues to use lower grade masks on the program to avoid using up supplies.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"The Resident" airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. ET on FOX.
Fox News' Ashley Dvorkin and the Associated Press contributed to this report.