The Trauma Code – K-drama Episode 1 Recap & Review

Enter Doctor Maniac

Episode 1 of The Trauma Code begins with a chaotic opening scene. A doctor races into a small Middle-Eastern village, which is currently being bombed by relentless planes overhead. With sunglasses and a backpack, he fearlessly storms through to the wreckage to the hospital in the middle of town.

This doctor holds a bunch of blood packs and he makes it there just in time to save the patients. This is Doctor Baek Kang-hyuk, and he has his work cut out for him, as he’s about to be given his toughest task yet.

Back in Korea, we learn a little more about these trauma centers. It seems like they’re not well-equipped to handle the growing pressure on them but the Minister of Health is looking to invest heavily over the next 5 years or so, promising that changes will be made and the chaos will end. The Minister herself is Kim Myeong-hui, and she has faith that Hangkuk University can pave the way for the rest of the country.

Kim reprimands the directors sitting before her, including Mr Choi whom has ended up with a 10 billion won investment for his hospital, which doesn’t appear to have been properly utilized within the trauma center. He retorts that there’s only really one bona-fide trauma specialist, and that’s someone called Dr Kwon. He’s currently on leave for extreme fatigue, and they haven’t been able to fil that position since but Minister Kim has just the person to take over. Step forward our Doctor Baek.

Before we get to him though, we meet Yong Jae-won, who happens to be one of the doctors in General Surgery. He races to the Trauma Ward, where Dr Baek just casually drops by. As he makes his way behind the scenes, we see how flustered Jae-won is – he’s clearly not prepared for this.

Jae-won works on a stab wound patient that’s just been brought in. It’s a precarious situation and Dr Baek just rocks up and takes over, effortlessly taking the knife out and managing to draw excess blood from around the heart.

Kang-hyuk scoffs when he finds out that Jae-won and the other doctors here take it in turns at the trauma ward, given the lack of trauma specialists on-hand. Well, that’s going to stop now as Baek is taking over Kwon’s job, stamping his authority immediately.

Baek has done his homework and realizes that this patient could well be part of a gang-related stabbing, given the knife and the fact it was already cut. He soon realizes that despite all this funding, the whole place is in disarray. Baek certainly has his work cut out for him!

Kang-hyuk preps for surgery alongside Jae-won but he’s not happy when he checks out the blood pressure on a patient. In fact, he kicks one of the anaesthesiologist, Hwang, out midway through! Despite being the top surgery department in the country, it’s clear that Kang-hyuk thinks this place has a lot to live up to.

Taking his place is Park Gyeong-won, who makes the right call in slowing the patient’s heart down while they conduct surgery. It’s a success, thankfully, but Kang-hyuk is not happy that surgery has overrun given he has his Appointment C eremony coming up.

All the doctors are angsty in the meeting room, talking amongst themselves given how late our Trauma Head is. He doesn’t apologize and instead asks them all to apologize to him.

Kang-hyuk wants the Trauma Unit shut down completely and certainly doesn’t mince his words. “This system is a train wreck” are his exact words. Instead, he wants this turned into a Trauma Center. He wants to show them all that he’s the real deal, and part of that includes revamping the whole department.

Unfortunately, Kang-hyuk gives a less-than-flattering nickname for Jae-won, who’s called Anus given he’s an expert in Colorectal Surgery. He brings Baek back in to help him with a serious trauma up on a mountain. He wants Jae-won to go with him and treat on-site as moving the guy, while the patient is this critical, is a chance he’s not willing to take.

There’s an amusing bit of banter between Kang-hyuk and a nurse, Cheon Jang-min, as she mistakes Kang-hyuk for a gangster looking to finish off the job on this stab patient. It’s quite using, and we even get a little fantasy scenario of him doing just that. Jae-won does calm everything down, and in fact Kang-hyuk gives her the nickname Gangster too.

The helicopter soon arrives and both Jae-won and Kang-hyuk race downstairs and outside to the helicopter. As they head there, the patient is in critical condition and they need to hurry before it’s too late.

We’ve already seen that this doctor will do anything for his patients, and this time he scoops up Jae-won and rappels down to the mountainside.


The Episode Review

The Trauma Code gets off to a frantic and fast-paced start, with a great blend of comedy and drama throughout. Kang-hyuk is your typical no-nonsense anti-authority badass but he’s undoubtedly great at his job and it looks like he’s going to help Jae-won become a better surgeon across these 8 episodes.

This sets up a nice angle for the student/teacher dynamic and it’ll be interesting to see what sort of changes are implemented at Hangkuk University as a result of Kang-hyuk stamping his authority.

It’s not all drama though as the pockets of comedy are nicely woven into this too. The misunderstanding with the nurse, including the fantasy scenario with him as a gangster, is one such example and hopefully we’ll get more of this to alleviate the tension.

Either way, this is set up to be quite the intriguing watch given what we’ve seen so far!

 

Next Episode

You can read our full season review for The Trauma Code here!

 

  • Episode Rating
    (4)
4

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