7 Movies for Medical Students
Feeling weighed down in medical school? Take a break with one of these seven medically-inspired movies.
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We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: med school is a lot of work. It’s physically, mentally, emotionally and intellectually demanding to balance courses, clinical experiences, and thoughts about your future after med school.
Sometimes, you need a break.
Lucky for you, we have just the thing: movies.
Pop a bowl of popcorn, sit back, relax, and watch one of these great medically-inspired movies. Then get back to work.
1. Patch Adams
If all that studying has made you need a feel-good movie, this one may be the winner. This 1998 semi-autobiographical hit features Robin Williams at his finest. His lesson? Laughter is medicine. The story chronicles the life of Hunter “Patch” Adams on his journey to become a physician solely because he enjoys helping people. Watch it once and experience a lifetime of inspiration.
The real-life Patch Adams currently lives in Urbana, Illinois, and still works to promote his alternative healthcare model.
2. Something the Lord Made
Into a more charged story and a bit of history? This HBO film celebrates the life and work of Vivien Thomas, who broke racial barriers in medicine during the Great Depression. He helped develop surgical procedures to treat “blue baby syndrome" with cardiologist Alfred Blalock during the 1940s. The movie stars Alan Rickman and Mos Def. Its lesson? The patient always comes first.
Dr. Thomas passed away in 1985, just days before his autobiography, Partners of the Heart, published.
3. Contagion
Like thrillers? Watch this one to get your heart racing. This terrifying movie deals with a deadly pandemic—and how infectious disease can spread across the world like wildfire. This one shows the interplay among healthcare professionals, government officials, and everyday citizens in the middle of a worldwide catastrophe. Its hope? Finding a cure.
Based on the real-life virus, Nipah, which has a high mortality rate. While some humans have died from it, most Nipah outbreaks haven’t spread and the CDC says it’s unlikely—the virus’s structure isn’t consistent with those that cause global pandemics.
4. Girl, Interrupted
If you’re interested in mental health treatment from a patient’s perspective, check out this 1999 film based on Susanna Kaysen’s story of her 18-month stay in an institution in the 1960s. This film offered one of the first mainstream Hollywood views of life on a psychiatric ward for women. Angelina Jolie, Winona Ryder, and Whoopi Goldberg give all-star performances that will lend emotional insight into the life of doctors and their patients.
5. The Doctor
When Dr. Jack McKee, played by William Hurt, a successful and egotistical heart surgeon who forgets that his patients are people—and teaches his medical students to check their emotions and feelings at the door—receives a diagnosis of throat cancer, his perspective on the profession changes. The movie reminds us that empathy is a key component to the profession and that physicians must have an emotional connection to their patients to be effective caregivers.
6. Awakenings
If you’ve ever wondered about catatonic patients and what becomes of “human vegetables,” take a look at this movie, which chronicles the lives of victims of an encephalitis epidemic in the 1920s. The patients can’t move until a new doctor “unlocks” them with a new drug. Robin Williams plays Dr. Malcolm Sayer, the real-life physician who helps these patients. The film raises the question, “At what cost do we practice medicine?”
The real Dr. Malcolm Sayer, Dr. Oliver Sacks, gave his encephalitis patients L-Dopa and "woke" them up briefly, with startling side-effects. He passed away in 2015.
7. M*A*S*H
Among the most famous medical movies ever, Robert Altman’s 1970 hit focuses on a medical team in the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital during the Korean War. This film, among a select few, offers viewers a glimpse of the horrors of war and medicine together—and shows how humor and love help everyone keep their sanity.
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