A
medical drama is a
television program in which events center upon a hospital, an ambulance staff, or any medical environment. In the United States, most medical
episodes are one hour long and set in a hospital. Most current medical
dramatic programming go beyond the events pertaining to the characters' jobs and portray some aspects of their personal lives. A typical medical drama might have a storyline in which two doctors fall in love.
Communications theorist Marshall McLuhan, in his
1964 work on the nature of
media, predicted success for this particular genre on TV because the medium "creates an obsession with bodily welfare".