Stress in Grey's Anatomy, S03E16
Analysis by Hala A.
Definition: Stress describes a person when they feel tense, anxious or worried. Stress is the cause of Stressors and results in Stress Outcomes. Stressors are at an individual, group, organizational, non-work level or a mixture of these levels. At the individual level, role conflict is when a person’s compliance with one set of expectations conflicts with another leading to stress. Non-Work stressors mainly refer to family obligations or taking care of elderly/children or college stress. Stress outcomes are divided into behavioral, cognitive, physiological and each person’s stress outcomes differ without doubt based on heredity, age, sex, diet, personality traits and many others. Behavioral outcomes include changes in satisfaction, performance, absenteeism, turnover, accidents and healthcare issues. Cognitive outcome examples are poor decision making, lack of concentration, forgetfulness, frustration and apathy. Finally, physiological outcome examples include increased blood pressure or cholesterol levels, coronary heart disease and hyperventilation.
Background: Grey’s Anatomy is a new show in which the setting is in a hospital just like ER. It discusses the lives of 5 medical interns at Seattle Grace Hospital. The most important person in the whole show is Meredith Grey. The show depicts the relationships and the very stressful day-to-day lives which these interns have and what they go through. Meredith and one of her attending, namely Derek Shepherd, are in love. Attending are normally one step higher than the direct bosses of these interns-residents- in the hierarchy chain of command in a hospital. Derek was married to Allison and he divorced her after choosing her over Meredith at the start. But then, he realized that he was too much in love with Meredith and less so with his wife. Thus, he went back to Meredith and they are currently in a relationship. A ferry that ran into a container ship because of fog leaves bodies everywhere and the ferry itself is on fire is the situation in this episode. All the interns are there helping US Coast Guard and rescue teams rescuing and saving whoever they find. Meredith was there and as she was helping a man on the edge of the sea; he’s in too much pain that he kicks her by mistake into the water.
Analysis: Normally doctors have high stress-tolerance and patience .This is because they may lose their patients in the OR if they weren’t trained to act quickly and react well to stress at all times. Medicine is the job that requires the most patience, calmness and alertness. This is seen in the surgical residents (Miranda Bailey, Callie O’Mali), the top 4 attending doctors (Derek Shepherd, Preston Burke, Mark Sloan and Addison Montgomery-Shepherd) and the Chief(Richard Webber). The 5 interns (Meredith, Alex, George, Izzie, Christina) are here to train and it is too good to be true that they also know how to act when stress kicks in. Everyone however reacts to stress differently and the most striking stress outcomes are seen in Derek while he rescues his love, Meredith.
To begin with, when Derek finds Meredith in the water, he is a completely different person. In the ambulance, he performs CPR and Mouth-to-Mouth on her incessantly. It is clear he was facing Role conflict where his job conflicted with his non-work relationship to this girl. The outcomes of this stress on Derek were so many and so different than those he would have gotten while operating on anyone else. Izzie also suffers role conflict since she’s on the disaster scene but she’s also on probation and isn’t allowed to do anything “surgical”. Thus, her role conflict is between also work and non-work.
The behavioral outcomes Derek showed were differences in satisfaction and performance namely in that he started convincing himself: She’s alive…She’s alive .Additionally, performing normal CPR takes time and counting. He was just trying again and again completely forgetting how to do it , which affected his performance level while trying to help her. No one else faces behavioral outcomes because they’re all in the hospital dealing with panicked patients, except for Izzie who’s still with the man and his friends and she doubts herself and her ability to save his life while he’s stuck there and thus performance is shaken and then boosted again as she concentrates and stops panicking.
Cognitive Outcomes apparent in Derek’s stress were many. We see him in the OR still trying to resuscitate and revive her heart while not seeing that her face showed very high hypothermia. When the chief comes in, he forces him out of the OR and Derek starts saying desperate things like “I saw a twitching in her pupil” and other nonsense. This scene clearly show his lack of concentration, decision making abilities and forgetfulness. Izzie also faces very tough cognitive outcomes when she had to drill the hole in the man’s head and his friend started freaking out and getting disgusted. She yells at him and gets all angry and frustrated. Alex also faces the same situation with the panicking families looking for their loved ones in the hospital. He yells at them because they were all stressing and panicking and their stress began rubbing onto him.
Physiological outcomes were also very evident in Derek’s reaction to this event where he cries and weeps, sitting on the floor outside the OR. It would have been better if he went and checked other people who were coming in from the tragic disaster. Everyone was stressed and all other doctors were busy with patients. Physiological outcomes are also seen in the Ambulance where he’s breathing heavily which could have most probably been hyperventilation. He’s both breathing and trying to convince himself and calm himself down by repeating that she’s alive.