If you've spent the last four decades defending a fictional hospital where people get shot, married, and resurrected in the same afternoon, you already know the drill. *General Hospital* has been on the air since 1963, which means it has outlived roughly nine presidents and every single phone you've ever owned.
And somehow, the show still can't figure out how a hospital actually works.
Port Charles apparently employs exactly four doctors, and all of them are related.
If you need surgery, your options are your ex-husband, your secret half-brother, or a guy who faked his own death twice.
Then there's the confidentiality situation.
In Port Charles, HIPAA is apparently a suggestion, like a speed limit or a hotel pool rule.
Nurses announce paternity results over the intercom.
Doctors discuss murder confessions in the cafeteria.
Last week someone's medical chart was just sitting on a bench at the pier, presumably next to a coffee cup and a discarded wig.
And can we talk about the recovery times?
A character will get shot in the chest during a November sweeps event and be back at work running the family business by Thursday.
Meanwhile, I threw my back out reaching for a remote and I'm still walking like a haunted scarecrow three months later.
The real issue, though, isn't the medicine.
Soaps survive on a very specific contract: you accept the nonsense, and in exchange you get twenty minutes of people yelling about inheritance.
But here's the thing that actually grinds my gears.
Every few years, the show brings in a "realistic" consultant or writes a Very Special Storyline about some medical condition, and everyone pats themselves on the back.
Then two episodes later, a coma patient wakes up, rips out their IV, and delivers a monologue about a codicil.
You either commit to the absurdity or you commit to the accuracy.
We just want one scene where someone fills out a form.
One scene where a doctor says, "I can't discuss that, it's confidential." One scene where a gunshot wound requires more than a Band-Aid and a meaningful glance.
In fairness, nobody watches a soap for realism.
We watch because it's the only place left on television where a person can discover they're adopted, inherit a casino, and develop amnesia, all before the first commercial break.
I'll keep yelling at my screen when a "neurosurgeon" mispronounces "aneurysm." I'll keep pretending the hospital has more than one hallway.
And I'll keep hoping that one day, just once, someone washes their hands.
Final take: *General Hospital* has survived sixty-plus years precisely because it ignores how hospitals work.
The day it gets medically accurate is the day it gets boring.
Final Thoughts
Just maybe hire one more doctor who isn't someone's evil twin.