The Pitt on HBO Max has won high praise for its medical accuracy, and today on Raise the Line from Elsevier you’re going to meet one of the writers responsible for that, Dr. Mel Herbert, a veteran emergency medicine physician who was also a consultant to the landmark TV show ER. Join host Lindsey Smith for a behind the scenes look at how the hit show’s medical and emotional realism is achieved, and why showing true expertise matters at a time when self-proclaimed expertise abounds.
“One of the reasons The Pitt has been so successful is because it's showing real expertise in a time when everybody thinks they're an expert,” says Dr. Mel Herbert, who brings decades of experience as an emergency medicine specialist to his work as a writer and consultant on the hit HBO Max show. Dr. Herbert, who was also a consultant on the groundbreaking TV drama ER, is one of seven physicians on The Pitt’s writing and production team, which explains the high degree of medical accuracy that is a hallmark of the show. But Dr. Herbert is also proud of the emotional accuracy captured on screen. “It's about the emotions. It's about the stress. It's about how it really affects the doctors and the nurses that I've found the most interesting to write about.” In this candid conversation with host Lindsey Smith, Dr. Herbert talks about his own struggles coping with the demands of life in the emergency room and the importance of letting clinicians know that help is available. “You don't have to suffer. We can help you now in ways we couldn't even do ten years ago. That's the story I want to tell.” In addition to his work using TV as an educational vehicle, Lindsey and Dr. Herbert discuss his real world efforts to provide emergency medicine education across the globe through his companies EM:RAP and EM:RAP GO.
Stay tuned to this very special episode of Raise the Line with Elsevier in which you will also:
Mentioned in this episode:
The Pitt
Mental Health Resources from American College of Emergency Physicians
EM:RAP
The Extraordinary Power of Being Average
Lindsey Smith
Hi, I'm Lindsey Smith and I'm thrilled to welcome you to Raise the Line, brought to you by Elsevier, where trusted content meets bold conversations about how to improve health and healthcare.
Today, we're diving into the world of emergency medicine and television, because sometimes the best way to understand the realities of healthcare is through the stories that bring them to life. And few people have shaped those stories more authentically than our guest today.
You may know The Pitt as the hit TV show praised for its remarkably accurate portrayal of emergency department life. What you may not know is that much of that realism is thanks to Dr. Mel Herbert, one of the show's key consultants and writers. If his name sounds familiar, it's because he also lent his expertise to another iconic medical drama, ER, back in the 1990s, setting a new bar for authenticity in television medicine.
But Dr. Herbert's impact goes far beyond Hollywood. As the founder of EM:RAP, and the affiliated nonprofit EM:RAP GO, he has spent more than 25 years creating and delivering high quality, trusted educational content to emergency medicine professionals in over 160 countries, a mission deeply aligned with Elsevier's commitment to improving healthcare through evidence-based knowledge.
He's also the author of The Extraordinary Power of Being Average, a compelling reminder that ordinary people armed with curiosity, perseverance, and the right resources can accomplish extraordinary things.
Dr. Herbert, we're so excited to have you with us today. Welcome to the podcast.
Dr. Mel Herbert
My pleasure. This is going to be fun.
Lindsey
So, let's start off by learning more about you and what first got you interested in your career in healthcare, especially emergency medicine.
Dr. Herbert
It's a bit of a long story, but I'll truncate it. I grew up in the Outback of Australia, literally on a farm – the closest neighbor was three miles away -- and I then moved to the big city, which was Melbourne. There was a series of events that occurred of people that were injured in front of me and I didn't know what to do.
The TV show M*A*S*H was a huge part of becoming a physician. I thought Hawkeye was the guy. I got into medical school, which to me was amazing because I was the first of five kids including my parents, actually seven of us, that had finished high school. Once I got into medical school, you have to try and decide what you're going to be, and I wanted to be somebody that knew how to do stuff...that could look after people at their worst times on the street or in the hospital. And so it turned out that emergency medicine was that for me. So, that is a very long story, very truncated, but that is the basic idea.
Lindsey
That's perfect. So you grow up in Australia, you go to medical school from there, come to the US for residency at UCLA, end up in emergency medicine, and then you're working both on the I, the TV show, and in the real ER. You create EM:RAP, and now you are working on The Pitt...an incredible story.
But before we dive into The Pitt, I want to explore your work with EM:RAP. You founded both EM:RAP and EM:RAP GO. Can you tell us how that got started and what role it plays for clinicians today?
Dr. Herbert
So, EM:RAP is probably the most used CME (Continuing Medical Education) program in all of emergency medicine. It started because in Australia, the undergraduate training is incredible -- it's as good or better than anywhere in the world -- but the postgraduate training 40 years ago in emergency medicine was very nascent. It had just started. And when I immigrated to the States, emergency medicine here was robust and the training was fantastic and UCLA was one of the best programs in the country and I couldn't believe how good the education was.
So, I would make recordings and summaries and send them to my friends back in Australia... like, you can't believe how good it is here. In Australia at the time it was basically go do 10 years of training and at the end we'll give you an exam that's really almost impossible to pass and we'll call that emergency medicine training. Whereas in the States it was really much like medical school...very regimented, learn these things, we're gonna teach you, we're gonna test you. And so that's where EM:RAP came from.
It was like, “I have to record these lectures, I have to edit them, I have to emphasize them, and then I have to send them back to Australia.” That's how EM:RAP started, is really trying to capture the education I was getting and send it back home, and then send it across the world, because the basic concept of EM:RAP was, why do we have all these residencies? And all the faculty that were, even back then in the States, were spread pretty thin trying to come up with a really good lecture on heart attacks or strokes. When we had people at these big centers doing really excellent work, why didn't we just have that lecture get sent to everybody in the world and then we could discuss it? So that was the concept of EM:RAP.
EM:RAP GO is just sort of the extension of that. Once EM:RAP became very successful, it's like, why are high income countries the only people getting this education? We should send it to low and middle income countries. So, through EM:RAP GO we send free, or almost free, subscriptions across the world to 160 countries but with the same concept. Here's really great education. Let's make it available to everybody.
Lindsey
You can tell that it's driven by passion and its mission as you talk about that. And access is huge, particularly in emergency medicine when the stakes are so high and the clock is always ticking.
So, you have this parallel career as a consultant and a writer on multiple medical dramas. You've worked on two of the most iconic emergency medicine shows in US history. How did you first get involved with ER, the show, and what was its cultural impact at that time?
Dr. Herbert
Well, it's not what you know, it's who you know. So, ER started when I was a senior resident. To start with the cultural impact, I was a senior resident in emergency medicine at UCLA. As soon as that show came out, emergency medicine went from this specialty where your mother and your father would say, ‘when are you going to be a real doctor, when are you going to go do cardiology or be a neurologist,’ to, oh my gosh, this is where the real doctors are. So, it changed everything.
I can tell you, as we were looking at medical students to come into emergency medicine, as soon as I came out, the quality of their residents took off. It had a huge effect on us in the residency. It had a huge effect across the landscape of people where people realized we really need the emergency department and these docs are the best of the best. So, it had a huge impact. It's hard to underestimate how big it was.
So, how did I become a consultant? I trained at UCLA, and five years before me was a guy called Joe Sachs, who is the brains behind the medicine of ER and the brains behind the medicine of The Pitt. Joe was actually my attending at UCLA. He was part-time, but I met Joe when I was a resident. And after EM:RAP had gotten big, he called me and said, “Would you be a consultant for ER, because I have to come up with all these cases and I want to run them by people.”
So for the last, I don't know, six or eight years of ER, Joe would call me a couple of times a week and we'd go over cases. We did that and it was wonderful and the show was amazing. And then many years later, Joe came to me and said, “There's a new show with some of the same people that did ER, but it's very different, and actually, it's incredibly unique. Do you want to play that role again of being a consultant?” I said of course, and that was before The Pitt had even had its first episode.
So really, again, I credit Joe with this. And actually, I have to go back and say that when Joe was in medical school at Stanford, they made you take a year off and go do something interesting. ‘Go do research, go do something interesting and we'll make you a better rounded, well-rounded physician.’ And his insight was that television was the best teacher of public health, so he went to film school and at the end of film school, ER started.
Initially, it wasn't accurate at all because it was written at a time in the 70s when there wasn't this specialty of emergency medicine. So when it came out, all of us that were watching who worked in emergency medicine -- the residents and faculty and the American College of Physicians -- said, this is just so not what emergency medicine is. So they brought Joe in, who was a board-certified ER doc, had a film school degree and said, can you make this more accurate, because we're getting killed here. And so Joe spent the next...I don't know, I think ER was 15 years, refining that show and then went on to do more television but at the same time was a practicing ER doc for the last 35 years.
Lindsey
Yeah, ER was everywhere and I think it helped to kind of pull the curtains back to emergency medicine and really shape the public's understanding of what is emergency medicine. You mentioned The Pitt, so I want to switch to that now, which is what we've all been waiting for. You're consulting and writing for The Pitt. Can you tell us what that experience is like and how much creative influence you have on the script?
Dr. Herbert
The Pitt is one of the most amazing...I can't believe I get to do this. I feel like my life has just been a series of good luck over and over again. In the first year, I was a consultant, so I would talk to Joe most days about cases and how they could play out. But then at the end of the first season he's like, Mel, will you come into the writer's room because I really need help creating the stories as we go.
Being in the writer's room is amazing. To take something that doesn't exist and then to turn it into story has been really profound. And it's not just the medicine -- and this was the biggest thing for me -- it's not just the medicine, because the medicine is pretty easy. You could probably find many, many ER docs that could just tell you, well, here's a good story and here's a good case. But it's about the emotions. It's about the stress. It's about what it really looks like, how it really affects the doctors and the nurses that I've found the most interesting.
For instance, Dr. Robby with his breakdown in season one. And so many people are like, well, he'll go and get help and he'll be fine next year. I'm like, that's not how that works. So that's what I find most interesting is really talking with the writers and hanging out with the writers and coming up with these story arcs of what it's really like to have PTSD over a career, not over one shift, but over a career.
And the writer's room is just full of geniuses. There's only a couple of us docs there, but the writers group is really diverse, culturally and age-wise, and that all works together to create the stories. I asked Scott Gemmill, who's the show creator and the lead writer, “How does this work?” He said, “I'm not quite sure, but it's sort of like magic. We put all these people together and we talk and we fight and we hustle, and then in the end, what comes out is something that is much bigger than we ever thought could be possible.” And that's what's amazing to me. I've never seen anything like it.
Lindsey
It really is magic and I've seen the show. I'm a big fan. And as a viewer, I can confirm that I have experienced every possible emotion throughout the show. I think what's special about The Pitt is that it truly hits this sweet spot where storytelling and medicine work so seamlessly together.
I want to come back to something we talked about a little bit earlier, about medical accuracy which The Pitt is getting a ton of praise for. What goes into ensuring the show stays grounded in real emergency medicine?
Dr. Herbert
The key is that we have ER docs that are putting it together. So Joe is my attending again, 35 years later. In season two, there were board certified, residency trained ER docs involved. There were two of us in the room writing and there was Greg Moran -- who was a writer, but not in the room -- and then four docs on set.
So, we write it as medically accurate as we can. There's restrictions because it's TV, because if you want to make it really accurate, it would be five minutes with the patient and 15 minutes chatting, but that would be boring television. And then on set, there is a doc that preps for least a week or two before we start shooting -- it takes about two weeks to shoot each episode -- and then that doc is on the set the entire time that they're shooting.
When it comes to the medical stuff, they step in and basically become a director and say, don't hold the ET tube like that; take the stethoscope off; here's what this person would say. So it's accurate because there are physicians involved in the whole process from the beginning to the end.
Then, after it's shot, Joe's in the editing room and he's helping the editors to make sure that it's accurate. It's realism comes from the fact that there are real ER docs putting it together. This is not a team of writers and directors and then maybe one physician that intimately consults. This is deeply created by emergency physicians with years of experience that are part of the team, and a really important part of the team, of putting it together.
Lindsey
Yeah, that level of detail, I think, really shows up well on screen. And you can tell the clinical world is so respected in the episodes that I've seen. So, one of the themes we've seen on the pit is tackling misinformation and disinformation, which is such an important topic in today in healthcare. For example, you have featured episodes involving a measles patient and vaccinations. How intentional is that? And how important is it to include those moments?
Dr. Herbert
It is incredibly intentional. Again, going back to Joe's insight 40 years ago, TV is probably the best educator. That's a profound insight, and also kind of frightening. You'd think that TV shouldn't be that important, but it is. So, it's really important for us to make the medicine as accurate as possible and there is so much disinformation now on YouTube, on Snapchat, on TikTok and coming now from the highest levels of government. There is so much terrifying misinformation. So every day, we really think about what are the most important public health issues? Can we speak into that with truth?
And because The Pitt has been incredibly medically accurate, people are beginning to trust it, which is also a little frightening because it's a TV show, but we really take on that burden and try and hit the most important issues that are occurring from COVID to vaccinations to street medicine to mental health...we're trying to hit those stories really hard.
Now it's a little difficult because we write it and shoot it and it doesn't come out for another nine months, so you've kind of got to predict what's going to be the big medical issue nine months from now. And in season one, as vaccination rates for measles were going down, we had experts in the room saying, well, what does this look like? And the experts were like, this is not very hard. If you reduce vaccination for measles, guess what's going to come back? Measles. What does that look like?
So we're trying to do that now on the topic of legislation that's been passed where a lot less people are going to have healthcare, or are going to have inadequate healthcare. What does that look like? So we are going to try and tell the world about what that actually looks like in the real world in the next season. So we're always trying to look at what's happening, always trying to predict, how does that play out?
And it's not just Joe and I and the other docs. We call in experts in Medicare and Medi-Cal and in infectious diseases, in psychiatry, and ask them the question, what does this look like nine months or a year from now? So far, we've been pretty good. I don't know if we'll continue to be good, but we've been pretty good.
Lindsey
Storytelling really is such a powerful way to break through that noise, and I've really enjoyed how The Pitt hasn't shied away from big, real world issues and has been able to weave those themes in so naturally.
Kind of staying on the theme of weaving things in, there's a lot of complex medical language in the show, which brings me to something I've always wondered. What's the process of getting the actors to remember and articulate all of this complex medical terminology?
Dr. Herbert
It's hard. When I started medical school, I was in highschool because in Australia you go straight from high school to medical school in a six-year program. At the beginning of the year, the dean gave us a big talk and said, “One of the things that's going to happen is you're going to learn a new language. It's like learning French or Spanish, and you are going to be fluent.”
To get fluency in a language takes a long time. So we're asking the actors to speak a language that they do not understand, that they've had a few weeks to try and learn. So, you've got somebody at one end like Noah Wiley who speaks this language because he did it for 15 years on ER. And then you've got actors who have no idea.
So, we phonetically tell them what these things are. We try and explain what those things are. Joe then records how you say the different words. I don't do it because I have an Australian accent and also my words are a little different than the average American. And then there are the docs on site, and when they're saying a thing or doing a thing, they can say ‘time out,’ correct them, and the actors do it again.
Sometimes it results in hysterical things where the actors just can't get it and then they get the giggles. It's actually quite a process and I'm just amazed at how well the actors do it, but if you ask them afterwards, “What does that word mean?” They'll say, “I have no idea.”
Noah's actually been on a number of TV shows where he's come up with just gibberish to make it sound like medicine. And he's like, ‘that's kind of how it is. I've made it sound really good, but I just told you gibberish and you can't tell the difference between the gibberish and the medical word.
It's quite a lift. The actors do it really well, but it takes a team effort. Again, just imagine if I asked you to give a whole soliloquy in a language you did not know, such as Arabic. You'd be like, wow, that's just a memory lesson. I have no idea what I'm saying.
Lindsey
There’s so much level of detail and it shows just how talented these actors are that you feel as a viewer that they've been doing it for years.
Let's move into a very important question here...I don't want to get you into any trouble, but can you say who your favorite character is on The Pitt and why?
Dr. Herbert
Yeah, I thought about this and I've got a very pedestrian answer. I'm sorry, but it's Dr. Robby. It's Robby because I see myself in him. I was an attending for 30 years teaching residents, and I see his stresses and his humanity and his PTSD... so I just relate to Robby. But having said that, I also worked with a number of Dana's. Strong, smart charge nurses that really ran the ER. So, I love Dana. And then of course there's Dr. Mel because we all love Dr. Mel. She's so sweet and kind, and yet struggling with this new role and struggling with her own issues.
So, I could just keep going down the list, you know, but they're my favorites. And I guess if I you asked me for one favorite, it'd still be Dr. Robby.
Lindsey
Yeah, I've got to go with Dana, the charge nurse, here. She's tough, but there's so much heart underneath it all. And then the close runner up for me, of course, is Dr. Robby. I think he brings so much depth to him. But really, the entire cast is absolutely incredible. So it is really a hard question there.
So, at Elsevier, we conduct a large annual survey called Clinician of the Future, and a consistent trend in it is that many clinicians are considering leaving the field for several reasons, while fewer students are entering it, which is problematic to healthcare in general. What role, if any, do you think shows like The Pitt have in influencing career interests in health care?
Dr. Herbert
I think like ER, The Pitt shows you the level of expertise and the incredible humanity of what is done, from saving people's lives to not saving people's lives, to being there when people die. There's nothing like medicine. It's really hard. When we look at burnout rates, medicine has a really high burnout rate and emergency medicine is at the top of the list. There was a New England Journal publication a couple of years ago that showed of all specialties, emergency medicine had the highest burnout rate.
But, it's not because of the medicine. It's not because of having to tell people the worst things at the worst time of their life. It's because of all of the systems issues we try to bring up. It's the boarding and it's the pressures and it's the lack of funding and it's the fact that public health in the United States has just fallen apart. That's the stuff that stresses people out.
But what The Pitt shows is that what we need is heroes. We need heroes to be there because everybody in this country and in every country at their worst time, needs somebody to look after them. The Pitt shows, here's a team that does that, and they do it so well.
One of the reasons The Pitt has been so successful is because it shows people, you know, just because you're an internet troll and you think you know how medicine works and you have all your opinions...you don't know what you're talking about. These people have trained for decades and they know how to help people and that's who's going to look after you.
The show is being called many things, but it's showing that expertise in a time when everybody thinks they're an expert, which is just insane. I think it shines a light to the world that no, to be really expert at something, you have to train at something. You have to be with a team of people and once you see that, you're like...there are so many kids I see watching the show saying, I want to be an ER doc. I want to be a charge nurse. I want to work in the emergency department because look at these people. They're at the top of their game. That inspires me.
It gives me hope because at a time when everybody is so cynical and thinks that you don't need to go to college, you don't need to learn things, anybody can do anything, this TV program shows actually you can't. Because if you turn the audio off and I show you the visuals and I ask you, what will you do to save this person's life, if you're not trained in it, you have no idea what to do and those people will die. And this program shows that training and expertise and teamwork matter, and I think that's inspiring to people.
Lindsey
Totally. Those are such great points there, and media really does play such a big role in shaping how people see all of this and see themselves in some of the characters that are on The Pitt.
So at Elsevier, we are all about filling knowledge gaps. Is there a topic you think we should create a video about....something you feel is urgently needed?
Dr. Herbert
Well, my bias right now is mental health, and we are showing that in The Pitt. I think it's really important that at the same time we have to show how expert these doctors and nurses are, we also have to tell the world and tell them that it's okay to struggle under that weight. That weight is enormous. We need to keep saying it's okay to go and get help. It's okay to be depressed at times, and to have PTSD.
And there are new therapies, and that's my big thing now. Psychiatry and the therapies for mental health disorders have completely changed in the last 10 years. We have new medications and new therapies and we have ketamine and we have so many new therapies that can help people. Because as you watch The Pitt, you can see it's like going to war, so of course you're going to have PTSD. In the past it was like ‘put on some new yoga pants and go do some stretching and it's all going to be okay.’ No, it's not. That's part of it. And going for a walk is part of it and exercising is part of it. But this is real. This is a crisis.
But there are new therapies that can really help. We were just interviewing an expert about psychedelic therapy for PTSD and depression and we asked him, what would your message be? He said I would just like to tell the world....and it gets me because it’s really important....you don't have to suffer anymore. We have therapies that can help you.
As somebody who's suffered from the PTSD of this work, getting that help saved my life. And I just want Elsevier and The Pitt and everybody to know you don't have to suffer. We can help you now in ways we couldn't even do 10 years ago. That's the story I want to tell. That's the story I want you guys to tell.
Lindsey
Thank you for sharing your story with us. We’ll be including mental health resources in the show notes for clinicians who might find them helpful today or down the road.
So, many of our audience members are students and early career health professionals, people who might see themselves in someone like a young Dr. Mel King or a student Dr. Whitaker from The Pitt. What advice would you give them about meeting the challenges of today's healthcare environment and building a meaningful career in medicine?
Dr. Herbert
It starts with the “why.” Why are you doing it? I mentor a lot of kids and a lot of students and a lot of people who are going to med school and when I have a kid that says I want to go to med school because it would be financially secure and it's a prestigious job, I say don't do medicine. If that's your reason you're not going to survive. It is far too difficult for that to be the reason. There are plenty other jobs that are financially secure and you should go do that.
If you're going to do medicine, you should do it for the right reason. Yes, it is nice that it's financially secure and it has some of the prestige that goes with it, but you have to do it for the right reason and the right reason is because you want to help because it's meaningful to you, so that at the end of your life you can say, I did something useful with my life. Otherwise you can't survive it.
I look back at medical school and then residency training and then those first years...it's so hard. The only way you can get through it and still be a reasonable human being at the end is that you're doing it for a higher purpose. That may sound airy-fairy, but it's really important. I've seen people try and get through medicine for all the wrong reasons, and it's basically impossible to do it well. You might survive but at the other end you come out as a very different person.
So the most important thing is to be very sure about the “why” and if you're not sure why go and volunteer. The Pitt is great, but you don't really know what it's like until you've seen it. So go volunteer at your local hospital. Do some EMS training. Get some experience. Follow a nurse around.
My daughter-in-law followed around a charge nurse at our big county hospital because she was thinking she wanted to be a nurse. I gave her the same advice...then go hang out with Cathy in the ER and see what it's like. Some terrible things happened that day and people died. And I'm like, oh no. And then she came home and said, I'm absolutely sure I want to be a nurse. That's how you get through this. Go do it. Be inspired by The Pitt, but if you want to know what it's really like then go volunteer. Go see it for real.
Lindsey
Beautifully said, and I think it's the kind of real honest encouragement I know our listeners will also appreciate. I know you also gave some great advice in your book that I had the pleasure of reading, The Extraordinary Power of Being Average, and I'd also encourage all of our listeners to check that out as well.
Before we wrap up today's episode, what can viewers expect next on The Pitt?
Dr. Herbert
Well, I can't give any spoilers, but I'll say this...after the first season and I walked into the writer's room for season two, I said, “I think we should all leave now. Season one was so good. How do you make it better than that?” And Scott Gemmill, the creator of the show, had a profound thing to say. He was like, “We don't try and make it better. We just try and keep telling the stories.” Because if you try and make it better, in television in Hollywood, that means bigger explosions, crazier scenarios. And if you follow that through after a few seasons, then it's become ridiculous.
So he said, we just continue to tell the stories. We only had a very short time to tell about what this looks like and the emotional arcs and what emergency medicine means, so we've got more seasons to tell that story. It's complicated. So let's just tell the story. Let's not try and make it bigger and more profound.
In season two, I think we've done that. We're writing season three right now and there's much more to say. These arcs are complicated. Humans are complicated. You cannot summarize what it means to go through this stuff in 15 episodes. You need many episodes. And so that's what we're to do. We're going to follow the arcs of what this actually looks like and that's going to take a few more seasons at least. Then we'll see where we are.
Lindsey
That sounds amazing. I know I'm very excited for what's coming. We can't wait to see what The Pitt comes up with next. Before we close out today's episode, is there anything that we didn't cover that we should have?
Dr. Herbert
No, I think I'm just really grateful to be part of this and to have people interested in it. And I'll say what I say to the docs that listen to our CME programs: The Pitt is the best, most accurate TV show about medicine that's ever happened, but it's not a CME program. We have to change things and represent things a little differently than you do in the real world.
The classic example is the CPR we show on The Pitt is terrible because if you did real CPR on the actors you would break their ribs and you would kill them. So there's stuff that's just not accurate, and it's also often compressed. So make sure that you don't use this, a TV show, as your CME. It should inspire you, it should help you to explain to your family and friends that this what you do, but it's not actual CME. Elsevier, EM:RAP, other places is where you get your CME, but it is really accurate. We try and make it as accurate as possible and we'll continue to do that.
Lindsey
Thank you so much for joining us today. This has been such a rich and honest and fun conversation for me. I really appreciate your time. And on behalf of all of Elsevier, we are huge fans of The Pitt and really look forward to seeing what's next.
Dr. Herbert
Thank you. This is my pleasure. Thank you for doing what you do.
Lindsey
And that brings us to a close on today's episode of the Raise the Line podcast. Dr. Herbert, thank you so much for joining us and for sharing not only your stories from the front lines of emergency medicine, but also your commitment to elevating how we learn, teach, and talk about the field.
Your work, whether through EM:RAP, your book, your years in emergency medicine, or writing for The Pitt, continues to expand what's possible when expertise meets empathy and a deep level of learning.
And to our listeners, if today's conversation sparked your curiosity about how emergency medicine really works behind the scenes, be sure to check out The Pitt on HBO Max. It's a series that doesn't dramatize emergency medicine: it honors it, thanks in no small part to the insights and guidance of people like Dr. Herbert.
I'm Lindsey Smith. Thanks for checking out today's show. Remember to do your part to raise the line and strengthen the healthcare system. We're all in this together.