Code blue! Push epi! Clear! Ah, the familiar sounds of the medical drama, a tried-and-true television genre.
If you’re a fan of watching doctors and nurses in white coats and scrubs take on high-stakes situations, both professional and personal, you’re awash with options to examine, diagnose, and enjoy. If you’ve yet to dip your toe in the genre, there’s no better time to do so. With so many to choose from, which series is right for you? Below, you’ll find prescriptions for 12 shows — including two docuseries — streaming on Netflix now.
Get ready to sweat. Pulse, Netflix’s first English-language medical drama, takes place at a Level 1 trauma center in Miami, wherein you’ll meet a crew of doctors who are sure to get your heart racing. The 10-episode series from creator, showrunner, and executive producer Zoe Robyn (The Equalizer) and showrunner and executive producer Carlton Cuse (Lost) stars Willa Fitzgerald as Danny Simms, a third-year resident who is suddenly named chief resident in the middle of a crisis after the previous chief, Xander Phillips (Colin Woodell), is put on leave following a mysterious HR complaint from Danny. Oh, and did we mention the series kicks off in the middle of a massive hurricane that sends patients pouring into the ER and cuts off power? Like we said, sweating.
If you have yet to watch Grey’s Anatomy, (1) what is your life? and (2) you are so, so lucky. What a dream to start this titan of the genre for the first time. It’s also a dream to revisit the long-running medical drama no matter how many times you’ve already seen it. Get lost in the drama of ambitious surgeons in Seattle as they navigate their careers, romantic entanglements, and what seems to be some sort of fatal curse on their place of employment. (Sorry, but to know Grey’s is to know pain … in a good, compelling, emotionally devastating way.) In Season 1, you meet Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), a competitive, talented, tequila-swigging surgical intern with a thing for a hot neurosurgeon she and her friends call McDreamy (Patrick Dempsey). Over the next 21 seasons (you read that right!), you watch as loves of her life (romantic and platonic) come and go, as she makes empowering and disastrous choices for her career and cheats death more than once. Honestly, more than three times. It’s a long show to scrub in for, but it’ll be time well spent.
What happens when a skilled trauma surgeon — one of the few in Korea — is hired to fix a struggling hospital’s trauma unit that’s not exactly receptive to the new guy? That’s the premise of the Korean medical drama The Trauma Code: Heroes on Call, an eight-episode series that premiered on Netflix in early 2025. When we first meet this trauma god, Baek Kang-hyeok (Ju Ji-hoon), he’s riding into a war zone on a motorcycle with a backpack of blood and other supplies. The doctors at Hankuk National University, who’ve had little to no trauma training, don’t appreciate his methods, but slowly he wins the team over and whips them into shape.
If your favorite part of medical dramas is the romance (listen, we get it), you’ll love Doctor Slump, a Korean series that blends the medical drama with the rom-com. High school rivals, Nam Ha-neul (Park Shin-hye) and Yeo Jeong-woo (Park Hyung-sik), both went on to become doctors; they bump into each other after both are fired from their jobs, and the two, desperate, wind up living together. Quite the enemies-to-lovers set-up: Over the course of the season, while Ha-neul and Jeong-woo figure out how to get back into medicine, or if they even want to, they slowly fall for each other.
If you’re looking for a medical show with a historical bent, give Call the Midwife a try. The UK series follows nurses and midwives in the East End of London during the 1950s and ’60s. While the series may look like a cozy period piece from the outside — and indeed, many of the storylines that focus on the friendships between the nurses, their love lives, or the general happenings at the convent where they live are generally warm and fuzzy — the series doesn’t shy away from tough subjects. Not only does it offer commentary on the socioeconomic issues of the time, but the midwives also deal with maternal mortality, still births, abortions (at a time when they were illegal), and female genital mutilation. The series presents the real and often devastating issues women were facing while also showing how women came together to support one another.
The Resident stars Matt Czuchry (Gilmore Girls) as Dr. Conrad Hawkins, a third-year resident and former Marine who takes great umbrage with the state of the US healthcare system. In short, Hawkins doesn’t play by the rules, especially when the rules hurt a patient. The highlight of the six-season series, however, is the on-again, off-again romance between Conrad and Nic Nevin (Emily VanCamp), a nurse practitioner. Medical professionals falling in love in high-stakes environments, a tale as old as time. The series also stars Manish Dayal as Dr. Devon Pravesh, an intern who becomes an unlikely close friend of Conrad’s, and Bruce Greenwood (The Fall of the House of Usher) as Dr. Randolph Bell, the chief of surgery.
This Spanish-language drama follows doctors in a busy public hospital in València, Spain. While there’s a lot of discussion about the hardships endured by doctors and patients within the public healthcare system — the first season of Breathless (Respira) leads up to a strike over working conditions, led by one of the hospital’s most prominent doctors — the draw for most will be the sex and debauchery had by this group of medical professionals. These young residents, led by Dr. Biel de Felipe (Manu Ríos of Elite), feels like the original Grey’s Anatomy gang — if Dr. Bailey hadn’t been there to keep them in line.
Looking for a less stressful viewing experience than most of the shows on this list? Virgin River hits the sweet spot. The Netflix series, recently renewed for a seventh season, is very much about the small town of Virgin River in Northern California and the drama and romance among its citizens. But at the center of it all is a clinic, run by Mel Monroe (Alexandra Breckenridge) and Doc Mullins (Tim Matheson), where other characters are always passing through. Mel, a nurse practitioner and midwife who has since started her own birthing center, arrived in Virgin River to work at Doc’s practice, and while the medical cases aren’t as high stress as the ones on some of the hospital-based shows on this list, they continue to be compelling six seasons in.
If you’re looking to supplement your medical dramas with a docuseries or two, start with Lenox Hill. The 2020 series followed several medical professionals at the Lenox Hill Hospital in New York with various specialties, including neurosurgery, obstetrics, and emergency medicine. One of the doctors, the chief resident in obstetrics, winds up giving birth at the hospital by the end of the season. The series is so intimate and engrossing, and the subjects so compelling, at times it almost feels like you’re watching a scripted series. The docuseries spans nine episodes, including one that covers the first few months of the Covid pandemic.
Created by Lenox Hill’s Ruthie Shatz and Adi Barash, this eight-episode docuseries highlights medical professionals in various New York-area hospitals working on the most stressful, urgent cases — from transplant surgeons and ER doctors to paramedics and trauma surgeons. Emergency NYC provides a look into some of the most demanding jobs within the healthcare system.
Jackie Peyton (Edie Falco) is a dedicated nurse working in the emergency department at New York City’s All Saints Hospital. She’s also juggling a husband (Dominic Fumusa), two daughters, an affair with the hospital’s pharmacist (Paul Schulze), and an addiction to pain pills. This seven-season, Emmy-winning dark dramedy follows Jackie’s journey as she manages unruly patients, interpersonal drama, and her own demons — while trying to keep her signature devil-may-care attitude intact.
Ben Whishaw (Black Doves) and Ambika Mod (One Day) lead this dramedy about a group of medical professionals working in an obstetrics and gynecology ward, which Whishaw’s character, Dr. Adam Kay, describes as “a ship that’s massive and on fire — and no one’s had the time to teach you how to sail.” The overworked doctors and nurses struggle to balance their professional and personal lives as they navigate the hospital’s complicated hierarchy and help bring life into the world. Alex Jennings (Operation Mincemeat), Michele Austin (Hard Truths), Rory Fleck Byrne (Dope Girls), Ashley McGuire (David Brent: Life on the Road), Kadiff Kirwan (The Stranger), and Harriet Walter (Playing Gracie Darling) also star in this miniseries based on Adam Kay’s 2017 memoir.
