by Marie Lorraine

Created on: March 18, 2010

He is addicted to painkillers, shockingly rude, selfish, and takes many risks most doctors would not even dream of taking due to his arrogance. Would I want a doctor like House? Yes. Quite simply, because he always gets his diagnosis.

 Dr. Gregory House is not a person that I would like to have as a co-worker, neighbor, or acquaintance. Like most fans of the show, I find his company the most enjoyable in my living room when there is a coffee table and a television screen between us and I am relaxing after a hard day. His open mockery of his fellow doctors and pretty much everyone who crosses his path can be quite the amusement in a voyeuristic sense, but I am sure even a person half as sensitive as I am would be hard pressed to keep their composure when on the receiving end. He is a character who dares to say what other people will not say for decency's sake, and dares to do what other people will not do for their image's sake. His massive personality flaws and addiction problem, however, only make up a part of what makes Dr. House such an enjoyable character to watch.

As a result of his narcissistic personality, House is not only a doctor who loses friends and alienates people, but he is a doctor who refuses to ever be wrong. Irritating as it may be to people around him, he does at least have the deductive skills and brilliance to back it up. While he displays no sympathy for his patients, many times this gives him the step back he needs to see things from a cold and logical distance. He does not see his patients as people, but instead as puzzles that need to be solved, and in the end this treatment, not being nice, is what solves the diagnostic mystery and allows his patients to live to see another day.

It is safe to say that if House were not a highly skilled diagnostician, Dr. Cuddy and the rest of the medical staff at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital would have had more than enough reason to send him on his way by this point in his career. He is disrespectful and sometimes downright cruel to everyone he works with, including (or especially) his boss, and has been a liability to the hospital on repeated occasions throughout the series.

If I ever fall ill with a mysterious illness, I do not want the doctor taking care of me to have a good reputation for being kind and well-liked. I want a doctor who has a good reputation despite being brash and disliked, because that is testament to the fact that he must be doing something right. I have friends and family to coddle me and tell me everything is all right, but a doctor's job is to be smart enough to figure out the toughest of medical mysteries, and that is a job I would trust in the hands of Dr. Gregory House.

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