Working in healthcare isn’t always pretty — a truth “The Pitt” expertly captures. In season one, episode nine of everyone’s favorite new medical drama, charge nurse Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa) emerges with a bloody nose after being punched in the face by a disgruntled patient. In the scene, a nearby medical student looks on in shock. “Happens all the time. Got my cheek broken,” one of the nurses tells her. “We’ve all been assaulted,” another confirms. For those who aren’t familiar with the modern-day ER, this moment might seem far-fetched. But in actuality, this is part of what makes the show so realistic for medical professionals.
“Why are people shocked?” one commenter writes underneath a video of the scene. “This happens in the ED, on the floor, in the units — everywhere.” Other healthcare workers add that they’ve been kicked in the stomach, spit in the face, and even swung at by patients. They explain that, oftentimes, these incidents are written off by supervisors or treated as part of the job. In her acceptance speech for best supporting drama actress at the the 2025 Emmys, LaNasa even took a moment to thank the real-life nurses that inspired her character.
“It is so much more common than I think the general public realizes.”
While “The Pitt’s” penchant for leaning into taboo topics like these certainly makes for interesting television, it also makes healthcare workers feel seen. A report from National Nurses United found that 8 in 10 nurses face violence at work. In that same report, 45.5 percent of nurses said their unit had seen an increase in workplace violence within the previous year. Verbal and physical threats were the two most common forms of harassment, but slaps, punches, and kicks rang in at number four (reported by over 36 percent of nurses).
A more recent survey from the Emergency Nurses Association found that 56 percent of emergency nurses had been physically or verbally assaulted or threatened with violence in the previous month. Healthcare workers are more than four times as likely to be injured by workplace violence than workers in all other industries combined.
“Some people will say in an online setting, ‘My God, is this what it’s really like?’ And people who work there will say, ‘Yes, this is exactly what it’s like.’ And they can’t believe it,” says Joe Sachs, MD, emergency medicine doctor and one of “The Pitt’s” consulting physicians. “On the other hand, the healthcare workers write in and say, ‘You know what? For 20 years I’ve tried to tell my friends and my family what it’s really like. And I could never put it into words until ‘The Pitt’ came along.’”
To learn more about why “The Pitt” feels especially relatable to so many healthcare workers, we spoke with some of the real-life nurses who appear on the show. Read on to see what they had to say (including some of their personal encounters with violence in the ER).
Experts Featured in This Article:
Joe Sachs, MD, is an emergency medicine doctor, a physician at Sollis Health, and a consulting physician for “The Pitt.”
Ambar Martinez, RN, is a nurse at Sollis Health and the actor behind Nurse Kim on “The Pitt.”
Jamie Lynn Watkins, RN, is a nurse at Sollis Health and the actor behind Nurse Jamie on “The Pitt.”
Ned Brower, RN, is a nurse at Sollis Health, a former EMT with the LA County Fire Department, and Jesse Van Horn on “The Pitt.”
How Accurate Is “The Pitt?”
To put it simply, “‘The Pitt’ is the most realistic portrayal of an emergency department that I’ve seen on television,” says Jamie Lynn Watkins, RN, (otherwise known as Nurse Jamie on the show). “Those of us ‘realies’ who worked on the show would often joke about how it almost felt too real.” Touching on difficult topics like violence against healthcare workers is one of the reasons why the show feels so accurate, with Lynn Watkins noting that this kind of vitriol has been on the rise ever since the start of the pandemic.
“It is so much more common than I think the general public realizes,” says Ambar Martinez, RN (aka Nurse Kim on “The Pitt”). She understands that patients in the emergency department are often having one of the worst moments of their lives, but that’s never an excuse to resort to violence. “I personally have been shoved, spit on, bitten, had things thrown at me, wrists bruised from a patient grabbing me, groped, and verbally abused more times than I can count,” Lynn Watkins tells Popsugar. She sees this type of treatment as a main risk factor for burnout or PTSD in healthcare workers.
“I decided to finally leave my last hospital after finding a gun hidden in a hallway bathroom.”
“I decided to finally leave my last hospital after finding a gun hidden in a hallway bathroom, after which the facility continued to refuse to get a metal detector,” Lynn Watkins says. She’s also had several friends leave nursing altogether because they did not feel safe at work. The environment has become a very hostile one and it’s not conducive to their job as healthcare providers. “I think the discussion on ‘The Pitt’ between the staff after Dana gets punched spotlights how it has become kind of normalized, and that’s not okay,” Martinez says.
Ned Brower, RN (Jesse Van Horn in the show), also noted that people tend to get frustrated due to long wait times and overwhelming crowds, all of which place further stress on healthcare staff. “This isn’t your father’s ER,” he says. “Conditions are worse than ever and that’s where ‘The Pitt’ is really shining — showing the general public just how dire these situations can become.”
Why This Representation Matters
A single television show might not change everything, but it can spark an important conversation. “Because we’re current and we’re accurate with our medicine, as a side effect, people learn and it can change people’s lives,” Dr. Sachs explains. Lynn Watkins agrees that awareness can make a real difference. “The more we can shed light on these issues, the better chance we have of ensuring caregivers for future generations,” she says.
As people learn more about the violence so many healthcare workers experience, hospital administrators and supervisors may face pressure to take these incidents more seriously. And at the very least, patients may become more aware of their own actions in ER settings, ultimately leading to safer, kinder environments — the kinds that all healthcare workers deserve.
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Chandler Plante (she/her) is a social producer and staff writer for the Health & Fitness team at Popsugar. She has over five years of industry experience, previously working as an editorial assistant for People magazine, a social media manager for Millie magazine, and a contributor for Bustle Digital Group. She has a degree in magazine journalism from Syracuse University and is based in Los Angeles.