Why The Pitt Is the Show Every Doctor Needs Right Now, with Dr. Jeremy Faust

Episode 76 • 23rd April 2026 • How I Doctor with Dr. Graham Walker • Offcall

The Pitt just wrapped its most talked-about season yet - and two ER doctors who lived the real version have thoughts.

In this episode of How I Doctor, Dr. Graham Walker sits down with Dr. Jeremy Faust, emergency physician at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Editor-in-Chief of MedPage Today, to have an honest, insider conversation about what The Pitt actually gets right, what it's doing to the culture around medicine, and why it's hitting clinicians so differently than everyone else.

This isn't a review. It's a reckoning. Graham and Jeremy explore physician grief, the mythology of burnout, the generational trauma baked into medical training, and why every ER doctor they know secretly identifies with Santos. Along the way, they explore what it means that a TV show is doing more to help Americans understand social determinants of health, end-of-life care, and the emotional weight of this job than almost anything the healthcare system has produced on its own.

For doctors who have felt seen by this show, and for those who can't bring themselves to watch it yet, this is the conversation worth having.

What You'll Learn

Why the most accurate thing about The Pitt isn't the medicine, it's the ethos.
What the show is actually changing about how patients approach end-of-life conversations.
Why ER doctors defend Santos when nobody else will, and what that reveals about the profession.
How medical training perpetuates cycles of trauma
Why the term "burnout" may be the wrong frame entirely for what's happening to emergency physicians right now.

🔗 Resources & Further Reading