6 things Hollywood gets wrong about doctors - and 4 things it gets right

Buena Vista Home Entertainment and Disney-ABC Domestic Television

Do you recognize any of these medical myths?

The American viewing public can't seem to get enough of doctors. Medical dramas have been a television staple since "City Hospital" aired in 1951. Since then, we've had films and television programs about physicians that have spanned genres - from historical pieces like "Mercy Street" and "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman," to soap operas like "General Hospital" to comedies like "Scrubs" to hugely popular dramas like "House," "E.R." and "Grey's Anatomy."

As a result, there are a ton of tropes and clichés out there about medicine and those who practice it. But what's reality and what's just creative license? And how do fictional depictions of doctors change how we view both physicians and medicine in real life?

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Business Insider recently spoke with Jenna Reece and Faiz Jiwani, two fourth-year medical students at Columbia University's College of Physicians and Surgeons who have also participated in Columbia's narrative medicine graduate program. They both described some of the popular tropes they frequently see in medical fiction.

Here are six myths about doctors and medicine that Hollywood frequently puts out there, along with four surprising tropes it often gets right: