Which American TV
Doctor Has Saved
The Most Lives?

Medical drama has been an enduring staple of American TV for years, prescribing keen audiences with high stakes drama and even the occasional laugh out loud moment.

And then of course there are the fictional physicians who make up the ranks at our favourite on-screen hospitals. From the troubled but incredibly intelligent Gregory House, to the neurotic but highly determined J.D., these medical heroes are often on call to help save the day.

But which famous doctor has saved the most lives and made the most correct diagnosis? New research from NiceRx has taken a deep dive into the careers of some of the most iconic TV medical personnel, to see who can be crowned as the biggest life saver.

Medical drama has been an enduring staple of American TV for years, prescribing keen audiences with high stakes drama and even the occasional laugh out loud moment.

And then of course there are the fictional physicians who make up the ranks at our favourite on-screen hospitals. From the troubled but incredibly intelligent Gregory House, to the neurotic but highly determined J.D., these medical heroes are often on call to help save the day.

But which famous doctor has saved the most lives and made the most correct diagnosis? New research from NiceRx has taken a deep dive into the careers of some of the most iconic TV medical personnel, to see who can be crowned as the biggest life saver.

Ethan Willis
Saved the most lives
Ethan Willis saves the most lives, followed by Leanne Rorish and Peter Benton
Ethan Willis
Most correct diagnosis
Ethan Willis makes the most correct diagnosis, followed by Shaun Murphy and Leanne Rorish
J.D. and Turk
Saved the least lives
J.D. and Christopher Turk have saved the least amount of lives

Career anatomy

We looked at 10 episodes from each series as chosen by a random number generator, and counted how many lives were saved, number of correct diagnosis, and incorrect diagnosis. Out of our dataset, Ethan Willis saves the most lives with 17, followed by Leanne Rorish with 16, and Peter Benton with 9.

House makes the most incorrect diagnoses by far, making 10 overall. However, his acts of heroism were also witnessed first-hand by the 7 people whose lives he saved. On the other end of the spectrum, our research found that Christopher Turk and J.D. saved the least lives with 1 each.

Doctor
Correct diagnoses
Incorrect diagnoses
Lives saved

Projected lives saved

With some of the action taking place off camera, we’ve used the number of episodes each Doctor has featured in, combined with their stats to make projections on how many lives they will have saved over the duration of each series.

Miranda Bailey has been a key figure of Grey’s Anatomy since the show’s inception in 2005. Her long and illustrious career has seen her climb up the ranks to eventually be named chief of surgery. Over the course of her 382 appearances, she’s projected to save 153 lives. Not too far behind is Meredith Grey, whose titular character is projected to save 151 lives.

John Carter put behind a memorably squeamish start in his medical career to top the amount of projected correct diagnosis with 254. Gregory House had an even split of 177 diagnosis that were both correct and incorrect, with his unusual bedside manner and unorthodox treatment methods certainly playing into this.

Doctor
Projected correct diagnoses
Projected incorrect diagnoses
Projected lives saved
No. of episodes
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