Since the 1970s, responsibility for health in America has largely been placed upon individuals rather than upon institutions. Individual health professionals have been held responsible for patient care, and individual consumers have been held responsible for adopting healthy behaviors to reduce their risks for injury or disease. Medical dramas were studied to identify messages about responsibility conveyed in these programs. This research was guided by the social construction of reality theory, and thus, it was assumed that entertainment media content like medical dramas can shape audience perceptions, including notions about health responsibility. The overarching research question was: What is the construction of responsibility in medical dramas?

Constructions of health responsibility were identified in four medical dramas (Chicago Hope, ER, House, M.D., and Grey's Anatomy) through textual analysis of 536 episodes from 1994 through 2007. The dominant construction of health professionals in the medical dramas was heroes who repeatedly risked their lives and careers to save their patients. When medical errors did occur, the health professionals were shown learning from their mistakes and becoming exceptional health care providers. Health professionals rarely faced consequences for medical errors in the care of patients who lacked friends or family.

Patients were often depicted as responsible for their medical conditions by engaging in behaviors that increased their risks of disease or injury. Few patients who engaged in risky behaviors were depicted as not responsible for their medical conditions, and in these cases the storylines conveyed that obstacles beyond their control prevented them from taking responsibility for the medical condition.

Health professionals were consistently constructed as heroes across the thirteen-year period studied. Fictional patients were expected to adopt healthy behaviors to reduce risks of injury or disease. Increasingly, they were also responsible for protecting themselves against medical errors and pushing for restitution if errors did occur.

Overall, individual health professionals and patients were depicted as responsible for health in these programs. The prominence of the individual responsibility model in the medical dramas reflects the continuing American emphasis on individual responsibility for health, despite criticism of this model by health policy experts and scholars.