Over the years, medical dramas have become their own unique genre of primetime television. From Grey's Anatomy to The Good DoctorChicago Med, and everything in-between, these shows both have many formulaic elements in common and each stand out in their own ways. The intense, commonly heartbreaking shows are often told from the perspective of doctors and nurses and tend to feature medical mysteries that each episode's main characters struggle to solve right along with viewers. Beneath the surface, however, medical dramas always center on the hardships of being human.

Medical dramas have been around for decades. But stories about heroes saving human lives have been around for much longer -- and the same overarching themes remain in these shows, even today. With each new one audiences are introduced to characters who struggle with morality, mortality, and the role each person plays in preserving the very fragile lives of others. Could this wholly ordinary look at humanity be the reason so many people continue to watch medical dramas even as additional options seem to pop up every year?

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Experts will tell you that medical dramas appeal to wide audiences because people are drawn to stories about people. George Ikkos, president of the Royal Society of Medicine's psychiatry department, told BBC News: "Programmes like Casualty are dramatic and exciting - they involve a lot of ordinary people we can relate to directly. It's not like watching something about nuclear physics or stamp collecting."

While relatively ordinary in their focus on people -- usually those without superpowers or any supernatural gifts whatsoever -- medical dramas do have that shock-factor element to them. Patients are rushed into emergency rooms and onto operating tables with the kind of hustle that increases a person's heart rate and knocks them to the edge of their seat. Real-life emergency situations may not always be as dramatic as they're depicted on the small screen, but TV is almost always exaggerated to thrill the masses.

It's likely that people come for the drama but stay for the relatability. Even if someone has a very small chance of being rushed to the hospital with a rare, incurable medical condition, someone watching it happen to a fictional character sees them not as a patient, but as a person dealing with a tragedy. Everyone has faced some kind of tragic event; they know what it feels like. For some, it can be comforting to watch others deal with trauma.

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When you explore beneath the surface of shows like ER and New Amsterdam, what makes medical dramas work isn't just the extreme medical cases, the complicated relationships between doctors, or the mysteries surrounding illnesses many audiences have never heard of outside of TV shows. It's the emotional stimulation that holds it all together. Without giving faces, voices, and backstories to medical cases, people wouldn't get so attached to storylines about surgeries, x-rays and insurance claims. Medical dramas capture attention because they're about suffering and healing -- and there's nothing more relatable than that.

Regardless of how medically accurate each of these shows may be, they all do one thing exceptionally well: They tell very real stories every day people can relate to. Not every medical drama viewer works in the medical field, knows the jargon or is even remotely interested in how hospital systems really work. But everyone watching harbors fears about loss, tragedy, and the unexpected. Medical dramas, even in their darkest moments, provide hope. They depict characters in peril, but also characters with the power to save them. Especially now, medical personnel are real-life heroes to many people. Up against the most life-threatening circumstances, there are people trained, willing, and able to help. And there always will be.

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