Best American TV Hospitals

By Raymond Lockley

Doctors are so prevalent in our televised culture that one famous commercial pitchman had to help us separate reality from fiction by saying, "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV." There are lots of lists of TV doctors and TV medical shows... but how about a list of great TV hospitals? (It should definitely be a category someday on Jeapordy!.) In some of these hospital-set shows, there's just something about the hospital that lets it become almost a character in its own right. Here is my list of the best television hospitals:

  1. St. Eligius, St. Elsewhere, 1982-88
  2. Sacred Heart, Scrubs, 2001-2010
  3. County General, ER, 1994-2009
  4. Seattle Grace, Grey's Anatomy, 2005-?
  5. Princeton Plainsboro Teaching Hospital, House M.D., 2004-?
  6. Rampart, Emergency!, 1972-79
  7. County General, Bones, 2005-?
  8. Blair General, Dr. Kildare, 1961-66
  9. Lang Memorial, Marcus Welby, M.D., 1969-76
  10. County General, Ben Casey, 1961-66

Honorable mention

Well, I hate to bring up soap operas. They're such a different form of television that they made the Emmy people set up a whole separate daytime awards show. And I think they'd be lousy as a "Jeapordy!" category. But the shows are pervasive, so it seems obligatory to mention a few daytime hospitals:

About the background symbols

Some of you may have noted there is only one snake on the background image, but thought there were two snakes and wings on the famous medical symbol. This is a common mistake. The Caduceus is actually a symbol for divine messengers. The proper medical symbol is the Rod of Asclepius. As Casey Stengel used to say, you could look it up. :-)

To index of lists