Two Boston-Based ‘Real Life’ Medical Shows Are Premiering This Summer

There are more than two dozen hospitals and medical centers in the greater Boston metropolitan area. So that means there’s a good chance you know someone (a friend, relative, neighbor) who works at one of these institutions. Now, you’ll get to see what their jobs are really like.

Last fall, amidst the doctors, nurses, and hospital staff working at three Boston hospitals (Mass General, Boston Medical Center, and Brigham and Women’s) there were also producers, directors, and camera operators. That’s because the ABC network was filming two television shows that the network says, “follows trauma cases from the actual scene of unimaginable accidents.” Both shows are from the same producers behind other medical “real life” programs, Hopkins, Boston Med, and NY Med.

Premiering first is Save My Life: Boston Trauma, a show that the network says gives the viewer, “top tier trauma teams inside the emergency rooms and operating rooms of the nation’s most prestigious hospitals.”

ABC press materials portray this show as a mashup of real life violence combined with a shot of human dignity. “One minute a mother struggles with the news that her son has been critically wounded in a shooting, while in the next scene doctors become a captive audience as their patient launches into an impromptu rap,” network executives say in a statement.

“Save My Life: Boston Trauma” premieres Sunday, July 19 at 10 p.m. on ABC. Starting Saturday, July 25, all subsequent episodes of “Save My Life: Boston Trauma” will air on Saturdays at 10 p.m. 

Next is Boston EMS, which the network says “follows the proud men and women of America’s most seasoned team of first responders.”

“We go with the police on raids, we go to fires, under trains, up on bridges, in tunnels, you name it,” a first responder says in the below trailer. The network says viewers will “ride along” with the first responders, who are the “first step in the chain of trauma care.” Press materials provide a heavy dose of Boston Marathon bombing copy, saying that many of the first responders featured in the show were also saving lives on that dark day:

It was this same group that answered the desperate calls of runners and spectators two years ago when the bombs went off at the Boston Marathon. Treating the injured and ferrying the wounded to hospitals, the Boston EMS earned the gratitude of a shell-shocked and grief-stricken city with their cool-headed professionalism. In “Boston EMS” viewers will meet some of the heroes of that terrible day as they answer new calls and respond to a daily dose of trauma and mayhem.

“Boston EMS” premieres Saturday, July 25 at 9 p.m. on ABC.