Over 100 Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of Fictional Doctors With Suspiciously Superhuman Healing Skills
Voting Rules
Vote up the fictional doctors you'd want to be looking up at from an operating table.
Since the dawn of television and film, doctors have been portrayed as one of two things: They are either psychotic monsters capable of great evil, or they are healers who possess a seemingly superhuman ability to help their patients overcome anything. Fortunately, the latter is more interesting than the former, which is why most of the doctors seen on television and in movies are incredible people who accomplish great feats in difficult situations.
There have been thousands of fictional doctors created over the years, but not every made-up physician is as talented as the others in their field. Some stand above the rest and become some of fiction's best characters. These are the doctors we all wish existed in the real world. At the very least, they inspire true medical professionals to try to emulate their successes.
Dr. Gregory House is the deus ex machina of medicine. In pretty much every episode of House, M.D., Doctor House walks into the patient's room at the end of the episode, says something profound, gives his diagnosis, and saves the day. Because of this heroism, the character quickly became one of the greatest medical diagnosticians in all of fiction.
What makes House such an interesting character isn't his skill in the medical field, though; it's that he is such a flawed character. House never fully recovered from a surgical procedure on his leg, which is why he walks with a limp and a cane. He's addicted to pain medication, which creates numerous problems for him with his friends and others in the medical community. He can also be a complete and total jerk to other people, despite his intention to heal the world with his incredible mind. Regardless, if you had some undiagnosed medical issue, Dr. House would be a great first stop.
Captain Benjamin Franklin “Hawkeye” Pierce, M.D., is one of the main characters in both the film M*A*S*H, as played by Donald Sutherland, and its television series adaptation, where he was played by Alan Alda. Hawkeye is easily one of the best-known doctors in all of television history, which is saying something, seeing as both ER and Grey's Anatomy passed M*A*S*H in terms of episode count.
Hawkeye is a brilliant surgeon who puts everything he has into healing the wounded men who pass through his tent. He is about as far from a military man as you can get in the Medical Corps, which earns him the ire of a few of his colleagues, as well as the complete and total respect of many more due to his skills as a doctor. He isn't able to save every wounded soldier he works on, but his compassion and the passionate energy he puts into his work ensures that more of his patients survive the Korean War than don't.
Dr. Michaela "Mike" Quinn isn't your traditional healer seen on television, thanks to her series, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, being set in the late 1860s. She is well-educated, and despite being a woman in a male-dominated profession, she sets out for the Old West to find adventure among the people of Colorado Springs. She quickly learns that the people of her new city don't embrace modern medicine as often as she'd like.
Despite this setback, she perserveres and becomes the town doctor. Her treatment of the people of Colorado Springs sparks a great deal of debate over how she should practice her medicine, but she manages to heal pretty much anyone she comes into contact with while the series delves into a plethora of social issues pertinent to the time period, as well as today.
Though he's most often remembered as the Starfleet officer who proclaims, "I'm a doctor, not a..." followed by pretty much every other profession known to man, Dr. Leonard H. "Bones" McCoy is one of the most gifted doctors in all of Starfleet. He works as the chief medical officer on the Starship Enterprise, and his close working relationship with the crew makes him one of the closest friends to Captain James T. Kirk.
Bones's shining moment comes in the film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. The crew of the Enterprise takes a Klingon Bird of Prey on a trip around the sun, which lands them in the 20th century. There, Bones winds up walking through a hospital looking for Chekov, and he passes by a sickly man who requires dialysis. This shocks the 23rd-century physician, who hands the man a pill and tells him to call him in the morning. Shortly after this scene, the patient is seen completely healed, as he apparently has regrown his kidneys.
Dr. Meredith Grey of Grey's Anatomy is a medical professional who has been through more than most combat veterans. In addition to losing the love of her life, she's nearly been blown up, survived a plane crash, and lost nearly every member of her immediate family. Despite all of this, she has managed to grow into one of the most innovative surgeons in the world.
Her techniques and adaptation of technology have helped her earn numerous prestigious medical honors for pioneering new ideas. She is relied upon to perform incredibly difficult procedures, and anytime someone in the world has a problem that can't be solved by any other surgeon, they head to Seattle to see if the great Meredith Grey can save them. She succeeds most of the time.
Dr. Douglas Ross is one of the main physicians working as a pediatrician at the County General Hospital in Chicago, Illinois. His devotion to his patients' health lands him in hot water on numerous occasions, but he's the kind of doctor you would want working on your children. He bucks the system and breaks the rules any time they get in the way of helping him heal others.
In one instance, he attempts an ultra-rapid detox of a substance-dependent baby, but does so without the mother's consent. That lands him on probation for 30 days, but it's little more than an inconvenience for Ross, who would rather do what he thinks is right for his patient's health regardless of the problems that may ultimately impact his career.
