Along with The Pitt’s general praise and multiple Emmy wins and nominations (it got 26 2026 Emmy noms), it’s also highly regarded for its medical accuracy and how it represents healthcare workers. With that in mind, I spoke to writer and executive producer Simran Baidwan about how exactly they make the series so accurate. In response, she told me how “fake body parts,” “animatronic babies,” medical advisors and more make it all possible.
During a conversation with Simran Baidwan about how they make The Pitt, I asked for examples of complex, intense and oftentimes messy medical situations that they pulled off accurately. The writer told me that the mass casualty event in Season 1 was one example, and the other was the intricate birth sequences we’ve seen. Speaking to those specifically, she said:
When we do these birthing sequences, they're really intricate and really involved. We've had real-life doctors ask us, ‘How did you get somebody to give you the footage of their birth?’ or ‘Isn't that a HIPAA violation?’ We're like, ‘No, no. It's all fake. We made it all up.’ These are fake body parts, these are animatronic babies, these are squishy babies, these are also sometimes real-life babies, all intermingled. So, even from real healthcare workers, their minds are blown by what we're able to do on the show.
From a technical standpoint, they use a variety of special effects, props and more to pull off intricate medical sequences. In the case of births and babies, they even use a variety of fake newborns while filming. In the case of Baby Jane Doe, they used multiple real babies throughout Season 2’s production.
Meanwhile, when it comes to writing these scenes and producing them in the most authentic way possible, Baidwan told me that they have Dr. Joe Sachs, Dr. Mel Herbert and Dr. Joshua Troke in their writers' room. In addition to them, there are also real ER doctors and nurses on set in every episode.
So, as scripts are being written, writers will make note of topics they want to cover – like adding a death doula to the story in Baidwan’s case – and then they go to the experts. Explaining that process, and the resources The Pitt uses to make sure it's medically correct, she said:
With respect to all the medical accuracy, we have a slew of experts. Hollywood, Health and Society has been great with getting us experts in certain fields. And then we have our in-house doctors. So, at every step of the road, we are really having checks and balances to make sure that by the time we get to shooting that things are really sorted out and in place and really well orchestrated.
When they get to set, that’s when the onset medical advisors come into play. They help coordinate and map out sequences. As Simran Baidwan said, shooting The Pitt is like doing a ballet, because it’s so complex and technical. However, it’s also controlled chaos. So, the medical advisors help them figure out how to make it all look not only accurate but natural:
Our onset medical advisors are so incredible; they really – it's kind of like they map out technical medical scenes, especially in those trauma scenes that have to happen a little bit more urgently. But what happens in a real ER is it's controlled chaos, right? So they do things like it's almost like a ballet. The rest of us would be a little [freaked] out if it happened to us in real life. So, how do we make it look like our actors do this on the regular?
She concluded by saying making The Pitt is an “incredible team effort,” and all this certainly proves that point. From props to people, this show uses a bunch of techniques and checkpoints to make sure what’s eventually available to stream with an HBO Max subscription is medically valid.
Now, to see what kind of medical situations they put on our screens next, make sure to tune in for Season 3 of The Pitt in early 2027. For now, you can go back and appreciate all the work that went into creating these moments in the ER by watching the first two seasons on HBO Max.
