Rutgers surgeons and physicians featured on ABC News’ NY Med, with Newark’s University Hospital the series’ latest location

Image of ABC News camera recording in operating room
ABC News cameras gained unusual operating room access to document the stories of efforts to save and restore lives in the eight-week series NY Med. 
Photo: Donna Svenneik/ABC

‘We hope the public will have a greater insight into the care and healing that takes place in our trauma department. Every day we treat the most challenging trauma injuries and the most serious illnesses throughout Northern New Jersey. It could be a patient in a car accident, or a victim of violence. Maybe someone with a heart attack, or a stroke. We are here for everyone who needs us.’
 
– Anne Mosenthal, NJMS trauma surgeon
 
 

A 19-year-old student pilot arrives at the hospital injured following a plane crash in which his instructor was killed; a young man who’s been shot in the jaw has a breathing tube inserted, just in time; and a couple separated during a violent home invasion are reunited.

Those are among the riveting story lines viewers will watch develop this season as these patients are treated by trauma surgeons and physicians from the Rutgers New Jersey Medical School faculty on the ABC News’ NY Med. The critically acclaimed reality television program returns at 10 p.m. (EDT) Thursday, June 26, for the start of an eight-week summer series.

With poignant stories recorded through unusual access with its cameras, ABC News illustrates what it refers to as “high stakes medicine” by presenting activities occurring inside the operating rooms at two major urban hospitals, Newark’s University Hospital, and Manhattan’s New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

The Rutgers team is shown in life and death situations inside University Hospital, northern New Jersey’s Level 1 Trauma Center and the primary teaching hospital of New Jersey Medical School (NJMS). 

“We hope the public will have a greater insight into the care and healing that takes place in our trauma department,” said Anne Mosenthal, professor and chair of the Department of Surgery at NJMS and chair of the Department of Surgery at University Hospital. “Every day we treat the most challenging trauma injuries and the most serious illnesses throughout Northern New Jersey. It could be a patient in a car accident, or a victim of violence. Maybe someone with a heart attack, or a stroke. We are here for everyone who needs us.”

In NY Med it falls upon Mosenthal to tell the mother of the gunshot victim how seriously injured her son is. “When I started this job, I didn’t have kids, and after I’ve had two children I see it really differently," she says.  "When I see a 17-year-old who’s been shot, I think that could have been my kid.”

The unique television series represents an opportunity for viewers to see close-up the bonds that can develop between the professionals and their patients and to understand the personal sacrifices and rewards that are part of the world of health care providers when lives are at stake.

Trauma surgeon Anne Mosenthal in scrubs
Trauma surgeon Anne Mosenthal
Photo: John Emerson

NY Med returns from a two-year hiatus after receiving high praise in its initial 2012 season. The New York Times said the series was “predictably absorbing.”  Newsday called it “beautiful and moving” and New York Magazine wrote that NY Med is “filled with warm honest moments like this – some poignant, others comic – and characters who would be plenty compelling even if they didn’t keep revealing surprising new sides.” The Los Angeles Times called the program “surprisingly addictive.”

ABC News producers spent much of the two years immersed in efforts to document the efforts of surgeons, physicians, nurses and EMT professionals – in two different nearby communities – in their daily efforts to save and restore lives.

“A medical crisis will bring most of us to the hospital at some point,” Terence Wrong, executive producer of the series, said.  “Where we live can be destiny. NY Med offers a stark contrast between the patient populations of Manhattan and Newark, which play out for viewers as this series unfolds.”