What patients are hearing: a large-scale corpus analysis of the most referenced medical conditions and pharmacologic drugs in popular medical television

Medical television dramas have a profound impact on the public’s understanding of healthcare. This study conducted a corpus analysis of the subtitles from two long-running medical dramas, Grey’s Anatomy and ER, to identify the top mentioned medical conditions and pharmacologic drugs. Subtitle files for all episodes were obtained, verified for accuracy, and preprocessed. A dictionary-based lexical analysis tallied mentions of medical conditions and drugs. Frequencies of the top 40 terms in each category were temporally analyzed using linear regression models and compared against real-world data. The top mentioned medical conditions across 711 episodes were HIV (216 mentions), stroke (213), heart attack (213), and pneumonia (168). Cardiovascular and nervous organ systems were most mentioned. Temporal trends revealed a decrease in mentions of medical conditions over time in both ER (p < 0.001) and Grey’s Anatomy (p = 0.001). Comparison with real-world incidence indicated an overrepresentation of rare diseases across both shows (p = 0.033). The most mentioned pharmacologic drugs were morphine (303 mentions), atropine (188), and lidocaine (165), and the most represented drug class was analgesics (34% of top 40 drug mentions across shows). These findings may lead to skewed patient perceptions and should be recognized by clinicians during patient interactions.