It was already hard enough with Westbridge closed to all emergencies, but a returning patient caused tensions between Langdon and Robby to rise on The Pitt season 2 episode 5. Meanwhile, Santos continues to struggle to get caught up on her charts.
Caution: This post contains SPOILERS from The Pitt season 2 episode 5.
The episode opens with Debbie Cohen’s return to the hospital. She came back at the end of episode 4, with her cellulitis from earlier in the season now spreading up her foot. This pulls Dr. Robby onto the case, and it means he and Langdon finally having to speak with each other.
I will say that throughout the episode Robby was unfair to Langdon. As Dana points out during the episode, what Langdon did at first would be what everyone would have done, including Robby. Langdon had no reason to believe that it was severe sepsis.
Robby ends up taking drastic measures when it takes forever to get a surgeon down to the ER. He decides to cut the leg open where the infection clearly started, forcing surgery down and to treat the patient immediately. Drastic, but it works to save the patient’s life.
Santos continues to struggling on The Pitt season 2 episode 5
I feel like Al-Hashimi is only getting on Santos’s back to push her generative AI software. Although, I do have to question how Santos is the only one struggling to do all the paperwork. I get that she doesn’t want to stay behind after her shift to do it, but is that what everyone else is doing, or are they finding a better way to do their charting?
After being given the suggestion to dictate, Santos decides to use that to her advantage. However, everyone keeps interrupting her. Even Dana won’t give her a break to be able to get more than a sentence out.
That’s when Al-Hashimi suggests her generative AI. Robby keeps pointing out that AI could end up taking their jobs, but that’s not what Al-Hashimi wants. She just wants to make sure she gets to spend time with her kids. She’s pushing the AI a lot, though, and it is off-putting. I am waiting for something to go wrong that proves that sometimes the old-fashioned way is the best way to do things.
To be fair, Robby has a great point in why getting through charting faster isn’t a good thing. It means seeing more patients without an increase in pay. While that would be good for the patients, it’s not great for the doctors. There needs to be a balance, and Al-Hashimi isn’t quite showing that she’s on the doctors’ side in this.
Ogilvie learns all about the horrible side of being a doctor
Meanwhile, Ogilvie gets a lesson he wasn’t expecting that day. To be honest, he should have had this lesson just a few episodes ago, when the patient came in with no blood panel, meaning nobody would know if he had HIV or not. Wasn’t Ogilvie one of the doctors who needed a full blood panel done?
Well, he ends up with another panel being needed. While treating a patient with a cough, Santos determines that it is tuberculosis. That means Ogilvie will need shots and to mask up, and they’ll need to make sure they handle this contagious patient with care so not to pass on the infection around the hospital.
That’s not just the hard lesson for Ogilvie, though. Santos points out that the shots are something that he will just need to deal with. It’s something that they all go through on a regular basis, and it’s just a hazard of the job. This is certainly something that isn’t brought up enough, even in medical dramas.
Catching up on other patients in the hospital on The Pitt
Throughout the episode, we see how various patients are doing. One of those is Mr. Diaz, who is struggling with the idea of staying in the hospital when it will cost so much. There is an option for him to move to another part of the hospital, showing the out-of-the-box thinking that is sometimes needed. However, he won’t be getting the IV drip that Mohan wants him to have, because he simply can’t afford it.
Cassie is able to get her cancer patient with the broken leg set up with the morphine drip, allowing her to go home. When this patient makes it clear that she wants to use the toilet herself but injures herself more, there is a look. The end-of-life doula pulls the husband out of the room, but it’s the patient who gives McKay a look, and I can’t help but sense there is something more to this.
Then there’s Whitaker and Ogilvie who need to unblock an elderly woman’s rectum. It’s a great teaching moment for Ogilvie, but he may want to listen clearly rather than focusing so much on what he knows from the books. Whitaker could tell that it was time to step back and he tried to warn the student, but nobody was really listening.
The biggest issue comes at the end of the episode. As Langdon goes to check on Louie, he’s unconscious and flatlining. Is The Pitt going to kill off the friendliest patient in there?
The Pitt airs on Thursdays on HBO and HBO Max.