The Pitt 2: Why Mindfulness Won’t Solve These Doctor’s Problems

April 2026

 

In Season Two of The Pitt...

 

Huckleberry and Neurodivergent have turned out to be pretty good doctors...

 

Santos is still toxic AF...

 

And continues to be the Queen of Jumping to Conclusions...

Which are all too frequently wrong...

 

Because you can pretty much depend on her to succumb to her many confirmation biases...

And accuse someone of something they didn’t do...

 

Particularly if they are male...

 

But the real problem is she is routinely nasty to everyone...

 

So she should really be locked away in a room reading x-rays or path slides...

And not put any where near a patient...

Or her fellow doctors...

 

Now we have some newbies this season...

 

Dr. “I’m Out of Here” Kwon...

Because asking a Gen Z doctor to stay and help during a crisis...

 

Is “So Boomer”...

 

And Ogilvie...

 

The Know It All ...

Who melted like an ice cream cone on a hot day...

The minute he screwed up...

 

So it’s clear he is not going to last long...

 

And then there is Robbie...

 

Who this season is simply awful to everyone...

Because he has PTSD or something...

 

Now he is supposed to be the heart and soul of the ER...

But the way he treats the other doctors...

Is just one example...

Of why the younger doctors in this show...

And elsewhere ... are struggling ...

 

Because Robbie has no tolerance for imperfection...

 

While he is slowly falling part...

 

So his doctors in training...

Learn that failure ...

 

Which is a fact of life in the practice of medicine..

Is not an option in Robbie’s ER...

 

And it’s shows like these that leave the impression...

That modern medicine can solve every problem...

 

If the doctor is just smart enough....

Or tries hard enough...

 

But if your problem doesn’t get solved....

Well...

 

And when it comes to Robbie...

 

Watch out if you are not a physician...

 

Because he publicly humiliated a couple of EMTs...

When he could have just pulled them aside.. and told them what they should have done...

 

And he also seems inured to the dangers faced by the nurses...

 

So hats off to Katherine La Nasa ...

As Nurse Dana...

Who deserves an award for the way she took on Robbie...

In a scene that deserves an Emmy...

 

And if the rumors about Noah Wylie are true...

The screenwriters may have had her speaking for everyone who has had to deal with him......

 

Now in the first season...

 

The Pitt looked like it was going to take head on...

 

Why the ER is ground zero for many of the problems...

That have made practicing medicine a lot less enjoyable ...

 

But this season that has turned out to be a largely unfulfilled promise...

 

Because other than a minor plot about EMRs

Season Two has largely avoided the biggie...

 

Which is how a health-care policy ...

That was supposed to be well intentioned....

Led to the corporatization of medicine...

 

Because that is what the ACA incentivized...

 

But that has created a sense of powerlessness and moral distress among so many physicians...

Of which Robbie is the poster boy this season...

 

But instead of taking on the real reason for physician burnout...

Which is the loss of autonomy...

That came when physicians became employees ...

 

Of a business...

Whose interests were not always aligned...

With what they thought they had been trained to do...

 

And no...........

 

Despite what the medical establishment keeps telling everyone...

Mindfulness...

Will not solve this problem...

 

But The Pitt doesn’t want to talk about that...

And instead leans heavily into...

 

Storylines that focus on the ”Social Determinants of Health”...

The new favored acronym you can find in almost every article these days in the New England Journal of Medicine...

 

So, of course, we have to stories about....

The usual...homelessness...

Racial stereotypes...

And privileged white people behaving badly...

 

And this season we get a patient who can’t afford insurance...

Because he makes too much money for Medicaid...

But not enough to buy insurance... or his insulin...

 

I guess no one told the showrunner about Rota Care Pittsburgh...

Where patients like this can get medical care free of charge...

 

Or La Clinica Pittsburgh...

Where he would have been charged based on his ability pay...

And given a deep discounts on his drugs...

 

Or the fact that Eli Lilly provides free insulin for patients who can’t afford it ...

 

But I guess those facts would get in the way of “The Message” ...

 

Now the specter of RFK, Jr. continues to hang around this season...

 

So there is a patient who has taken so many supplements she has killed her liver...

 

And we get the MAHA Mother...

Who wants a “wild” delivery...

Un-encumbered by prenatal care...

Because who trusts doctors anymore...

 

And of course ICE has to show up...

 

Except the masked ICE agent is so MASSIVE and INTIMIDATING...

He looks like a villain who came straight from a Marvel movie...

And acts accordingly...

 

While one of those nice residents films him in the middle of the ER full of patients...

Because I guess HIPPA doesn’t matter when you are on the side of right...

 

And no...

 

No poor resident is going to be deposed in a malpractice case...

On the Fourth of July...

 

Which are a few of the reasons The Pitt has been disappointing this season...

 

But I still it enjoyed it anyway...

 

Because that bit about twisting the hilum to stop the bleeding from a torn pulmonary artery was bad ass...

And made me think that might have saved Princess Diana...

 

So if you are thinking about going to medical school...

You should really watch this show....

Because you will learn a lot...

 

This season it gave a tutorial on the correct way to suture...

How to recognize the early signs of sepsis...

 

And I think I could now do an emergency hysterotomy...

 

So all the interesting techniques now in an ER doc’s armamentarium...

Remain the most compelling part of this series...

At least for me...

 

Which helped me tolerate...

The fact that half the docs on this show need therapy...

 

Because the March of the Snowflakes in Medicine...

Continues to fill our screens...

 

Because now it seems that shows about medicine have to focus on ...

How doctors are struggling to handle the stress of the job...

 

So for more on this...

See my upcoming review of This Is Going to Hurt...

 

But this plot line assumes...

 

That it has only been just recently ...

That physicians have come in close contact with pain and suffering...

 

Which is definitely not the case...

 

Earlier generations...

Often had to watch patients die...

Because they didn’t have the technology...

That is so well showcased on this show...

 

So maybe the real problem...

Is not that doctors see a lot of suffering...

 

But that...

 

Fear of Failure...

Has paralyzed a generation ...

 

Who had to gold plate their resumes...

To make it into medical school...

 

But then come face to face with a reality..

Where failure... and blame..

Lurk around every corner...

 

With Doctor Robbie waiting there to chastise you...

Whenever you screw up...

 

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