Grey’s Anatomy has seen more than its fair share of useless interns over the years, but youngins have certainly screwed up more flagrantly than others. Some, like Cristina Yang (Sandra Oh) and Shane Ross (Gaius Charles), start out as self-absorbed sharks who need to be put in their places and learn how to work with others. Others, like Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl) and Leah Murphy (Tessa Ferrer), sabotage their own surgical educations through ill-advised relationships. And then, there are those like Meredith Grey herself (Ellen Pompeo), who seem hellbent on pioneering new, innovative ways to mess everything up.
Regardless of the individual motivations, to watch this long-running ABC drama is to learn over and over again that new interns simply cannot be trusted.
But which of these floppy-eared newbies were the worst of the worst? Whose mistakes were simple stumbling blocks on the way to surgical excellence, and whose were pure, bona fide, unforgivable fuck-ups? Ahead of the show’s Season 20 premiere—which will wrap up not one but two intern-induced messes—we’ve conducted a thorough study and are now ready to present our highly scientific findings. Here, for your perusal, are Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital interns’ most memorable blunders, ranked from benign to disastrous.
I should perhaps kick this list off by admitting that I lack a medical degree, and as such, I probably lack the expertise to make more than a vibes-based judgment on which of these mistakes are actually the worst, according to the medical community. (Real-life surgeons, thank you for all that you do, and please do not roast me via email!) That said, I’d wager that Schmitt’s infamous glasses plop pales in comparison to pretty much every other entry on this list—even if it did earn him the humiliating nickname “Glasses.” I mean, it’s certainly not as bad as the time he killed a patient because he refused to wait for an attending to perform a routine surgery... But that was after he’d already become a resident.
Baby intern Meredith’s first mistake in Season 1 Episode 5, “Shake Your Groove Thing,” was not the real problem. By the time she realized her glove had popped, exposing her fingernail while she was holding a patient’s heart during surgery, it was already too late. But by failing to mention this to Dr. Burke (Isaiah Washington), she worked herself into a paranoid frenzy that she later made even worse by admitting all of this to Dr. Burke in front of the patient’s husband. In the end, it turned out that the patient’s arterial walls were weak and her subsequent complications had nothing to do with Meredith, but still, it’s fair to say that the hospital’s legal department did not exactly love Meredith that week.
Shane was always the most self-absorbed of his intern class, and this wasn’t even his worst offense. His intense focus on neurosurgery led him to single-mindedly compete with his classmate, Heather Brooks (Tina Majorino). This unfortunately led (indirectly) to Heather’s death when Shane lied during the Season 9 superstorm. Derek had asked Shane to page her to join in on a surgery, but instead, Shane told her that he’d asked her to find Dr. Webber. While looking for him, Heather wandered into the basement, where she was electrocuted. To make matters worse, he lied about it by omission for an absurdly long time. Later on, he also managed to basically kill Alex Karev’s (Justin Chambers) dad. And yet, somehow, he still got to go to Zurich with Cristina. Injustice, thy name is Shane!
This one feels pretty self-explanatory. This series is basically a walking confidentiality violation, because no one at the hospital can seem to keep their mouths shut. Remember the time Maggie Pierce (Kelly McCreery) told Jackson Avery (Jesse Williams) about his mother’s cancer? Or the time Cristina Yang violated the code on literally Day One? Given that this is a TV drama, which necessitates a certain amount of gossip, the constant HIPAA breaches are not exactly surprising. Still, if this were the real world, pretty much everyone at Grey Sloan would’ve been fired at some point.
On Thursday, Season 20’s premiere will have to resolve the lingering issue of a patient death. Interns Lucas and Simone risked their jobs during the finale by operating on Teddy Altman’s (Kim Raver) patient, Sam Sutton, after she collapsed in the operating room. As interns, they’re definitely not allowed to operate without an attending, but Lucas wasn’t willing to let Sam go without a fight. Given the circumstances, the choice is understandable, but they will likely face harsh consequences. (Or, hell, maybe they won’t! On Grey’s, consequences are always kind of a toss-up.)
In this case, the patient was already dead, so it could’ve been worse, but completing an unauthorized autopsy is definitely a no-no and also very illegal. In Season 1’s “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?,” the pair cut open a man who died mysteriously without his family’s consent. This could have been a huge lawsuit, but luckily for them, they discovered that he died from a genetic condition—which then distracted his family into making sure his daughter didn’t also have it. Just one more stroke of luck for a pair of doctors who would go on to have several more mishaps before they each left Seattle.
In truth, I’ve gone back and forth over which of Dr. Roy’s offenses was actually worse. (You’ll hear more about the first time he got fired a few items down on this list.) His first error here—putting off a patient who’d come in with a nosebleed for several hours—was almost understandable. But then, after the patient died because Roy failed to examine him further, Roy refused to call his time of death, claiming that he shouldn’t be held responsible because he was just an intern. It’s no surprise that after that shoddy performance, Karev canned him again, and for the last time.
De Luca first rolled into Grey Sloan with a trauma patient. (You know, a typical Grey’s intro.) To his credit, he did ask Owen whether or not he should fill out his paperwork, but when Owen told him to take care of that procedural stuff later, he also didn’t exactly protest. Everything turned out OK in the end, after De Luca was later forced to admit he was just an intern, but in different circumstances, things could have gone very, very wrong.
This one’s another loose end that we’ll need to tie up on Thursday night. During the Season 19 finale, Benson intubated an 81-year-old patient after she stopped breathing—a direct violation of her DNR order. To make matters worse, Maxine wrote down his fellow intern-slash-romantic interest, Jules Millin (Adelaide Kane), who also happens to be her roommate as her medical proxy. Meaning, Jules might’ve wound up having to decide if Maxine lived or died. At this point, it seems like Maxine will probably be fine, but things between Benson and Jules are now obviously a little more complicated than before.
It should go without saying that an intern should not be doing an attending’s surgeries, but after Burke got shot and lost the use of his hand, he and Cristina somehow convinced themselves that it was a good idea for her to cover for him while his motor functions were still not 100 percent. Thank God George found out before Burke was supposed to operate on his father, prompting Cristina to finally spill everything to Webber.
Leah, Leah, Leah. Like many a shark before her, her ambition really derailed her—as did her awful romantic instincts. Let’s start with the first issue: For someone so desperate to make a name for themselves, she really screwed up a lot. Remember the time she hooked up a patient’s IV to their oxygen while arguing with fellow intern Stephanie Edwards (Jerrika Hinton)? Or the time she tried to slip a Jehovah’s witness blood instead of fluids? And while it might’ve happened during her first year of residency, there was also the truly horrific incident in which she drilled through a man’s leg all the way to the table because she refused to just spill the beans to Callie Torez (Sara Ramirez) about her affair with Arizona (Jessica Capshaw) or make up an excuse to get out of the surgery. It’s no wonder Webber eventually gave her the boot, even if that decision did come way too late.
After a mishap at the hospital involving some weed cookies, good ol’ Vikram wound up high. This is not the problem. The real issue is that he knew that and lied, saying he hadn’t had a cookie, so that he could scrub in on a Whipple procedure. He then proceeded to freak out and trip, knocking over a supply tray and stabbing himself in the process. The baseline for any decent surgeon should be not operating while high, but apparently that was too hard for our man Vikram. To make matters worse, he had the nerve to threaten the hospital with a wrongful termination lawsuit afterward, blackmailing his way back into job before getting himself fired again. This guy was truly the worst!
Here it is—the most notorious Grey’s Anatomy screw-up of all time. Izzie’s love story with Denny is a giant testimonial for that rule that doctors can’t be personally involved with their patients. Izzie was desperate to move Denny up the donor list, so she cut the wire connecting him to the machine that had taken the place of his heart to tangibly worsen his condtition. She pumped the balloon herself until a new heart arrived, and in a true miracle, it all worked. Then, in a Shonda Rhimes-ian flourish of karma, he died from a stroke not long afterward.
Where do we even start with this woman? First, she somehow faked her way through med school (?!) and then, she encouraged her fellow interns to remove her appendix as a practice surgery. Maybe she shouldn’t take the fall for the whole intern cabal, but she certainly pushed it over the edge and wound up getting them in big trouble when her appendix turned out to be inflamed, which prompted them to call Meredith, Cristina, and Bailey for help. On top of that, she also missed skull fracture signs on a patient, causing their death; mislabeled blood samples; cheated in Izzie’s “intern contest;” and ultimately quit the program to avoid being found out as a giant fraud. Oh—and she also tried to get Meredith to leave the hospital with her?! Trash!!!!
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