Medical drama that focuses on the personal and professional conflicts of medical interns working under senior surgeons at a major hospital.
During their first year of internship at New North Hospital, a group of aspiring doctors undergo both personal and professional upheavals. John Paul Otis destroys his medical career when he falls in love with celebrated model Lisa Cardigan and tries to steal pills from the hospital in order to abort her pregnancy. His lifelong friend, Lew Worship, feels duty-bound to report the theft, and Otis is expelled. Lew, who begins internship with plans to become a surgeon, becomes dedicated to obstetrics. He falls in love with a student nurse, Gloria, and tries to persuade her to marry him and give up her dream of going abroad. Intern Considine, who is anxious to study under psychiatrist Dr. Bonny, becomes so involved in two simultaneous romances that he loses sight of his goal and suffers a nervous collapse. The interns are confronted with the ethical problems of mercy killing, and the tragic death of an incurably ill Malaysian girl inspires Dr. Sid Lackland to plan to devote his life to aiding the underprivileged in the Far East. Mado, a woman intern from behind the Iron Curtain, is so dedicated to her profession that the head surgeon, Dr. Riccio, forgets his prejudice against women doctors and makes her his assistant.—alfiehitchie
The professional and personal interrelationships of the interns at New North, a county teaching hospital located in a big city, with their superior doctors, the nurses, patients, family and friends, and each other are presented. Their stories focus on five of those interns. Sid Lackland, the class clown, wants a cushy life working for rich people. He becomes a little more serious as he falls for one of the poorer patients in the women's ward, Loara, from a small island in Indonesia. While Loara, who is unfamiliar with western health care, is in the hospital for what ends up being a routine splenectomy, she is certain she is in the hospital to die. Player Alec Considine is stringing along two women for his own selfish reasons, the two who don't know about the other. To manage both relationships while doing his internship, Alec pumps himself with chemical stimulants to stay awake. One of the few females, aspiring surgeon Madolyn Bruckner, came to New North specifically in the hopes of learning from her idol Dr. Dominic Riccio. However, Riccio is less than receptive of working with a female doctor, let alone her goal of doing her residency under him. Friends Lew Worship and John Otis, also both wanting to be surgeons, have plans of opening their own medical clinic after they complete their residency. Lew is earnest to a fault, including with women, he ultimately being set-up with nurse trainee Gloria Mead. As they start to fall for each other, their path to a long term future may be hindered by differing immediate life goals. And John ends up falling for model Lisa Cardigan, who he first spots on a photo shoot. John potentially risks his entire medical career before it even starts when he contemplates helping unmarried Lisa abort her fetus. These stories are within the context of an overriding one, namely of patient Arnold Auer, who is slowly withering away from a degenerative disease that will ultimately render him almost completely paralyzed and in pain, the doctors and the interns always willing to humor his faithful and loving wife Emma Auer who is always searching for a miracle cure.—Huggo