The following is a response to August 19, 2025 publication in SoMeDocs, How to Keep Your Cool When the World’s Yelling About Risotto.
A viral video of a medical trainee examining a mannequin while Gordon Ramsay screams in the background is making the rounds online. Commentators say it perfectly captures the skill of staying focused and composed amid the chaos of real-world medicine.
But does it?
Not Just a Laugh
The world is applauding this video. But when I saw it, I felt something else: sadness.
I left a comment—“This makes me sad because this is NOT how medicine should be. We should not be perpetuating the abusive medical culture that so many of us trained in… a little empathy goes a long way when training our residents.”
To my surprise, more than 2,500 people (and counting) agreed.
That comment is why I’m writing this urgent response. Because while the video is going viral, so is the problem it represents: the normalization of screaming, shame, and abuse as part of medical training.
Chaos Is Not a Curriculum
Of course, medicine requires composure. Of course, lives depend on staying focused in crisis. But equating excellence with enduring humiliation is not the same thing as resilience. It’s cruelty masquerading as curriculum.
This isn’t Hell’s Kitchen. Our patients are not risotto.
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A Story I Still Carry
I remember my very first overnight call as an intern in the CCU. Exhausted, anxious, running on adrenaline. By morning, I was rounding with an attending who was, to put it bluntly, a bully.
He screamed at me in front of my colleagues. He screamed at the nurses. He screamed about a patient’s hair not being combed. Hair.
After the call, I cried. And I was embarrassed to cry, because medicine trains us that tears are weakness. But I was bone-tired, wrung out, and human.
Later, that same attending smirked at me and said, “Did I damage you for life?”
I told him, “I don’t know. We’ll have to see.”
But the truth is—he did. He’s one of the reasons I left inpatient medicine. He’s one of the reasons I will never return to that hospital. He’s one of the reasons I refuse to normalize this cycle of abuse.
Generational Trauma, Served Hot
Medicine is in my lineage. My mother is a physician. My grandfather and great-grandfather were physicians. My uncle pioneered open-heart surgery in our region of India. One cousin was the first in vitro fertilized child in that same region.
I was born and raised in America, but I still inherited the cultural expectation: you are told what to do, and you do it.
There’s a joke: a father asks his son what he wants to be when he grows up. The boy says, “An actor.” The father replies, “Beta—it’s pronounced doctor.”
We laugh. But beneath the humor is a hierarchy. And too often, hierarchy in medicine means harm.
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Real-World Medicine Looks Different
The risotto metaphor doesn’t match my reality. In my practice, nobody yells. Nobody shames. Nobody performs cruelty as pedagogy.
Because I chose a different path.
I practice Direct Primary Care—a model that prioritizes empathy, autonomy, and relationships. Real-world medicine also includes telehealth, locums work, utilization review, consulting. These are valid, valuable careers too.
And here’s the truth: not once during a virtual visit has a patient leaned into the camera to scream, “It’s raw!”
The Cost of Normalizing Abuse
The damage is not just anecdotal. It’s systemic.
- Residents burn out.
- Physicians leave medicine altogether.
- Depression and suicide shadow the profession.
- Compassion is squeezed out of the very people trained to heal.
We are told, “Be comfortable in uncomfortable situations.” But resilience is not masochism. Focus is not forced suffering.
We don’t build better doctors by breaking them.
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A Better Recipe
What if, instead of cooking up chaos, we simmered a system of support?
What if training included:
- Empathy as the base
- Respect as the spice
- Psychological safety as the main course
- Autonomy and wellbeing as the garnish
We’d graduate not just physicians who survive—but physicians who thrive.
This isn’t theoretical. It’s the life I live. In my Direct Primary Care practice, I am seen, valued, and respected. My patients are too.
Healing’s Kitchen
The viral video is funny. But the reality behind it is not.
Yes, the world will always be yelling about something—risotto, metrics, politics, margins. But in medicine, let’s not confuse volume with value.
We don’t need Hell’s Kitchen.
We need Healing’s Kitchen.
Because the real secret sauce of medicine isn’t screaming. It’s empathy.
What if, instead of cooking up chaos, we simmered a system of support? What if training included empathy as the base?
