Just How Realistic are the Surgery Scenes on 'The Good Doctor'? A Real-Life Nurse From the Show Weighs In
The Good Doctor Season 3 ended with a devastating plot twist that left viewers upset.
While Season 4 has been confirmed, neither filming nor an air date have been released.
In the meantime, actresses from the show shared a behind the scenes look at the show in a new interview in honor of International Nurses Week.
If you’ve ever wondered whether The Good Doctor is, well, good at portraying real-life hospital scenarios, you’re in for a treat.
On Monday, May 4, actress Fiona Gubelmann (who plays Morgan on the show) was joined on Instagram Live by Rebecca Brown, who not only plays a nurse on The Good Doctor, but is also a nurse in real life. The nearly 40-minute-long chat was aired to celebrate the start of International Nurses Week.
Rebecca works as an operating room nurse specializing in women and children three to five days a week in Vancouver, Canada.
“I could never choose between pediatrics and the OR and I really love working with children,” Rebecca shared. “My daughter herself spent a lot of time in surgeries and was in the hospital a lot for respiratory problems as a child, so I was always around that and saw how amazing the nurses were, so that really spoke to me. But it wasn’t until after I began working on the wards that I really decided to go into the surgical field, and with that, it was great because in gynecology I get to deliver babies and I kind of get the best of both worlds. The babies and the surgery.”
While Rebecca admitted she’s been pulled from surgery due to the pandemic putting all electable procedures on hold, she and Fiona kept the conversation to the surgical room—namely, how well a real-life dynamic is portrayed on The Good Doctor.
“So when you see us filming the surgeries, we have actual nurses with us,” Fiona says. “And Rebecca, you’re there, handing us equipment, and telling us if we’re doing it correctly, incorrectly, and all that stuff. So I want to know: When you’re in surgery with us, do you find it more stressful or less stressful than actual surgery?”
“Less stressful, for sure,” Rebecca laughs. “Because there’s no patient’s life in your hands, right? But we also get along really well on The Good Doctor. I’m really lucky to work with you and all the other cast and crew members because it’s so relaxed and it really is a fun environment to be in for the most part, so there’s not a lot of pressure and we don’t have a life in our hands.”
Even still, Rebecca says that being a nurse on the show is very different from being a nurse in real life because in real life she wouldn’t spend 14 hours on one surgery. “But, at the same time, the steps that we follow on the show are very accurate to what really happens and everything from the ward scenes that you see to the OR scenes, it’s very accurate to what would truly happen, so the steps that we take are very similar to being a nurse,” she adds.
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There was one scene, however, that Fiona recalled and Rebecca concluded was not accurate. “I remember one time we did a scene and we had a patient coding and after using the defibrillator twice, they call it and we’re like, ‘Okay, guess the patient’s dead,’ and I was just like, ‘Wait, what? That’s how quickly they do it?’” Fiona recounts. To which Rebecca grins and clears the air: “No,” she says, shaking her head.
After learning it actually takes around 45 minutes to determine if someone has officially coded, Fiona admitted that she knows they cheat a tiny bit simply to fit into their time slot.
“That was an adjustment for me as well because for me I’d be like, ‘No, wait, we would do this step,’ but the truth is nobody wants to watch a five-hour surgery scene,” Rebecca adds. “So there are things we sometimes have to tweak but the steps that we’re doing that the viewers are watching are correct.”
In the IG Live clip, Fiona shared that The Good Doctor has been picked up for season four, but they haven’t started filming yet, nor do they know when they will. “We were supposed to in June but are unsure when it will be safe to return to filming,” she said. Nevertheless, we’re just glad one of our favorite medical dramas will be back—and more interesting than ever now that we know it really does portray real life.
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