CHICAGO MED: Diane Frolov and Andrew Schneider Preview the Hospital Grappling with Supply Chain Issues and (Shaky) New Residents

With CHICAGO MED undergoing a few shakeups, the hospital is getting a gaggle of new doctors…who will be varying degrees of helpful to the staff. (At least initially.)

“Nellie is a fellow,” CHICAGO MED co-showrunner Diane Frolov tells Give Me My Remote of Lilah Richcreek Estrada’s role. “We have not had this kind of character with Charles; she is absolutely very well-trained. She’s a full doctor. She’s not an attending, so he’s still her senior, but she can talk to him on the same level. So it’s not so much that the teaching role of somebody who doesn’t know anything like psychiatry, like we saw with Reese. So that’s exciting, new for us to do that.”

The hospital is also getting new residents Kai (Devin Kawaoka) and Zach Hudgins (Conor Perkins), who “represent kids who are coming out of medical school out of COVID,” Frolov says. “And so they have not had hands-on experience. And both of those characters have dealt with that insecurity and inefficiency in totally different ways.”

“What we learned from our consultants is that the people coming out of medical school during COVID, because of the COVID protocols and safety issues, they never touched a patient,” MED co-showrunner Andrew Schneider adds. “Even though they’re full-fledged doctors, they’re very inexperienced.”

With the MED doctors being among the best of the best, their reaction to the new residents is expected. “Our docs can get frustrated; a guy like Archer can get very frustrated,” Frolov acknowledges. “They’re also good teachers, so they have teaching moments. We see that with Ethan mentoring someone, giving somebody confidence. And they also get in conflict with them, because if one of these young doctors thinks they know more, that’s going to cause some [problems].”

Unfortunately, that might be the least of the doctors’ concerns: Season 8 will dive into the ongoing medical supply chain crisis.

“We were shocked when we started developing the new season to find out how critical these supply chain issues can be,” Schneider says. “[It’s going on] even in the very top hospitals and medical centers, because a lot of pharmaceuticals are made overseas; a lot of basic equipment is made overseas. And so if there are supply chain issues, these things are in short supply everywhere. It doesn’t matter that you’re a premier hospital.”

“And hospitals are constantly, almost daily, getting a list of those things they don’t have,” Frolov adds. “And then the people on that day have to deal with it. So we just thought that was incredible.”

In MED’s storytelling,  “it puts them, sometimes, in conflict when they’re fighting over short supplies,” Schneider previews. “But it also brings them together as a team, since they’re really all fighting the same battle. We can also show how they can be really creative in the midst of the shortages. For instance, Ethan and Archer they’re both [former] military doctors, and so they’re used to treating patients with limited or no supplies. We’ll see just how creative these guys can be.”

Also possibly needing to get creative is Maggie (Marlyne Barrett), who finally decides to be honest with her husband, Ben (Charles Malik Whitfield), about the recent complications in her life.

“It’s not a good thing that she didn’t tell her husband about Grant,” Frolov acknowledges of Maggie’s ex/father of the child she gave up for adoption. “That just doesn’t go down that well. It becomes a problem in her relationship with Ben. Maggie is also torn inside, because she still has a bit of this fantasy of her youth—that this is the lover that got away. So she’s being torn.”

Warns Schneider: “It will cause conflict with Ben.”

CHICAGO MED, Wednesdays, 8/7c, NBC

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