For anyone interested in emergency medicine and/or health policy, I recommend the new documentary Code Black.
The examines where the specialty of emergency medicine came from and how it is practiced today, focusing particularly on “C-Booth,” LA County Hospital’s legendary trauma bay. Viewers follow a cohort of young ER doctors as they transition from working in the old LA county hospital building, which was physically tight and constricting yet exempt from many government regulations, to the new LA County Hospital building, which is physically more spacious and modern, but actually much more mentally constricting due to the regulations that everyone in that building is now subject to.
As part of my effort to form a Dartmouth chapter of the Benjamin Rush Institute (formerly called the Benjamin Rush Society), we held a screening of this film last week in cooperation with the non-partisan Health Policy Interest Group on campus, of which I’m also a part. The film was an excellent choice for an audience of people with mixed political beliefs because although it shows the negative effects of regulation, it is certainly not a propaganda piece for either side.
It’s hard to find in theaters at the moment, but you might be able to find a screening open to the public at a medical school near you:
http://codeblackmovie.com
