For four months, ABC News executive producer Terence Wrong and his crew followed doctors, nurses and patients at three Boston hospitals--Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Womens Hospital and Children's Hospital--sometimes around the clock, to gather footage for "Boston Med," an eight-part 'docu-medical' launching June 24 at 10 p.m.
While there is little doubt that the show, which includes a heart transplant that ended in death for one patient and a life-altering face transplant for another, will have audiences riveted, some medical ethicists have voiced concerns about this and similar behind-the-scenes documentaries. The mere presence of cameras, they argue, can be inherently disruptive to hospital routine. Additionally, critics worry about patient privacy and the possible impact on quality of care, according to an article in the Boston Globe.
"People don't expect to be filmed when they go to the hospital," says George Annas, author of "The Rights of Patients" and a professor of health law and bioethics at Boston University. "You didn't come there to get filmed. You came there to get your illness or injury treated, and they're taking pictures of you and making them public."
But David Westin, president of ABC News, and Wrong, the show's executive producer (who also produced "Hopkins," "NYPD 24/7," "Boston 24/7" and "Hopkins 24/7"), say that their work does not exploit patients, emphasizing that only those patients who signed consent forms are seen on-air. "We had a very strict process of getting informed consent if they are seen on the air in an identifiable fashion,'' says Wrong.
Wrong also insists the ABC videographers were neither a distraction to surgeons nor a temptation for them to showboat. "These are professionals who've spent, in some cases, 20 years just to attain the rank of an attending neurosurgeon,'' he told the newspaper. "The last thing on their mind is varying any aspect of the care they're delivering because the camera is there."
To learn more:
- read the article in the Boston Globe
- see this piece in the New York Daily News