PLAYING DOCTOR
Cast of ‘Night Shift’ is getting schooled about the medical world
Scrubbing in as part of the cast on NBC’s “The Night Shift” not only requires its cast to be in top form. It also gives a glimpse into the medical world.
From treating patients with post traumatic stress disorder to individual characters having their own medical scares, a day on “The Night Shift” is a learning experience.
The drama series follows a medical team at San Antonio Regional Medical Center that works the night shift. Many of the characters’ back stories were spent as military medical teams in Afghanistan.
“The Night Shift” airs at 9 p.m. Mondays and while set in San Antonio, is filmed at Albuquerque Studios. The show was a hit for NBC last summer averaging more than 6 million viewers during its eight-episode run. The second
season started off strong for the series pulling in more than 5.5 million viewers.
Freddy Rodriguez plays Michael Ragosa, who has seen the most growth, as far as career, since season one.
In season one, Ragosa is the hospital administrator, who is strict enforcer of hospital protocol. He was also an unflinching bureaucrat determined to cut costs at the hospital.
After facing a health scare, a brain tumor, Ragosa decides to leave his administration job and pursue his training as a doctor.
“Ragosa has seen a lot of change this season,” Rodriguez says. “It’s interesting to see how he sees both sides of the spectrum. As a doctor, he wants to help those who needs it. But when he was the administrator, it was a business. His feelings were about the bottom line. He always asked himself, ‘What is this going to cost?’ I think there are plenty of people in this position who go through those struggles daily.”
As the series has moved along, the writers have touched on real-life cases.
One subject in the first season saw a teenage girl get rushed to the emergency room, unable to breathe. Upon examination, Krista Bell-Hart, played by Jeananne Goossen, found a knife lodged in her throat. It turned out the girl was bulimic, though her parents didn’t want to admit their daughter had a problem.
“One of the writers on our show used to write for ‘ER,’ ” she says. “Zack Lutsky is one of our medical consultants and he wrote that episode. That case is based on his very first case that he got as a residency as a doctor. Isn’t that wild?”
Goossen says her character is continuing to find her confidence as a doctor, as she struggles with the losses and successes of being a doctor.
While there have are other medical shows airing now or in the past, Goossen says seeing the success of “The Night Shift” is special.
“This show has a love of humanity and there’s a uniqueness that we have together,” she says. “If people are open-minded to what we’re doing, it can be infectious.”
Goossen admits that emergency room protocol really isn’t followed on the show, but it’s also a dramatized version of it.
She says that many of the actors and writers do research on the side about the medical industry and some actors are also researching the military.
Goossen read a book called “Doctored” last summer which tells the story of a doctor who had this idealistic look at how he was going to help people with medicine.
“Then he discovered a very broken system,” she says. “He had to play the game. (On this show) I like the idea that we are renewing the idea that there are a lot of physicians out there who want to just treat people. It’s taking it back to the simplest form.”