Am I Only one who is irritated by doctors and medical shows?

[Destiny'skid]

I am not even a nurse yet, but my short time in the hospital as aide made me see how much nurses do and how smart they are about patient care and how little doctors are even around and sometimes honestly they seem to just not get what is actually going on. Sometimes they actually seem pretty clueless...

Yet somehow medical shows continue to portray the situation unfairly. I actually got into a small disagreement with someone about the show scrubs. They said all in all it was one of the better ones, but one of the nurses makes a comment about never going to college (then she couldn't have been a nurse) and their is a particularly irritating scene where a doctor fires a nurse. you also see the doctors sending the nurses to new assignments?

Any way i know it is just tv, but it upsets me because so many people are just ignorant

to what nursing is all about.

I know I was. I wanted to be a doctor mostly because I wanted to challenge gender sterio types, but one stay in the hospital changed my perspective took a 180. the nurses are the ones taking care of the patients!

Any way I don't want to bash doctors but I think maybe we need a new outlook on the way we view the healthcare team.

[Do-over, ASN, RN]

Oh boy! I had forgotten about Trapper John! Will be checking out youtube on my next stretch of days off =)

[Rhi007]

Let me say this....scrubs is a comedy!!!! Shows like all saints, greys anatomy, ER and private practice all have a doctor on set to ensure medical accuracy read the credits and watch the special features.

There has to be a degree of medical accuracy

[DoGoodThenGo]

Let me say this....scrubs is a comedy!!!! Shows like all saints, greys anatomy, ER and private practice all have a doctor on set to ensure medical accuracy read the credits and watch the special features.

There has to be a degree of medical accuracy

Trapper John, M.D. had a medical consultant as well: Walter Dishell - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[DoGoodThenGo]

Then there was the medical drama that crossed the line as far as professional nurses were concerned.

Nightingales was series that ran for barely one season on NBC before being yanked, and even that was too long for some. What can you say about a show that the Pew Charitable Trust gave funds to nurses so they could protest the thing?

The show was basically eye candy for men with thirty minutes of young *nurses* giggling, jiggling, sobbing, flirting and doing everything else but nursing. Oh and you could often count on some "skin" time in each episode showing these *nurses* in various stages of undress or getting dressed. If the namesake for this series, Florence Nightingale were alive to have seen it she would have started another movement to reform the profession.

Nightingales: Chapter 6 (1989) part 1 - YouTube

Advertisers/sponsors did agree to sit down with professional nursing groups to make changes that reflected nurses in a more positive light (and showed less skin), but it didn't help and in the end NBC cancelled the series.

[DoGoodThenGo]

Someone on this site once pointed out that all the highly dramatic things that we see doctors doing on TV as they are supposedly doing patient care are actually the meat and potatoes of the nurses job. For whatever reason, people find it more appealing to watch a doctor obtain a urine specimen or place an IV than a nurse.

Things that make me go Hunh? Watching a doctor on Grey's pull out a packet of sterile gloves, open it up, pull out the gloves, flap them around, blow on them, smack them up and down on the table for good measure and then put them on; hospice patients on tele; critical patients without lines or O2; people freaking out when someone pulls off their EKG leads -- as if it's going to kill them; people pulling out their IVs without any mess; and patients waking up from year-long comas completely rested and able-bodied.

MASH was definitely a great show though, I loved Major Hoolihan.

What many of these medical dramas get wrong is that professional nursing is it's own practice complete with an autonomous hierarchy.

Physicans do not supervise, manage or otherwise tell nurses how to do their jobs nor do nurses report to directly to them. Ironically an older medical drama "M*A*S*H" gets this right by showing the nurses report to Major Houlihan and not the physicans, but modern shows like "ER" never seemed to grasp the concept. The former also showed nurses doing their own patient assessments and arriving at "nursing" diagnosis and treatments as well as triage. Again something the latter never seemed to get right.

[RNsRWe, ASN, RN]

Shows like all saints, greys anatomy, ER and private practice all have a doctor on set to ensure medical accuracy read the credits and watch the special features.

There has to be a degree of medical accuracy

Umm....a really small degree, from what I've seen. Having "a doctor on set" --receiving credit on screen--does little to "ensure medical accuracy" as anyone who's watched these shows can attest.

Where was the doctor who was "ensuring medical accuracy" when a well-drowned, hypothermic Meredith was being coded FOREVER, then left on the table after everyone gave up and THEN BANG: returned to life speaking and moving normally and ready to return to work a few days later?

And what about those miraculous codes where the patient is bounced around on a bed for a handful of compressions, gets a series of shocks on asystole and somehow snaps out of it and is having a sandwich with a visitor an hour later?

Medical accuracy is a joke.

That said, what accuracy can be expected regarding the nursing, when an MD is the only professional consulted? If the 'Medical Consultant' were an RN, I imagine the end result might not look the same

[turnforthenurse, MSN, NP]

Grey's Anatomy is by far the worst offender....as much as I love that show...the doctors do EVERYTHING while the nurses are just short of pushed aside or asked to complete simple, mundane tasks...like handmaidens, if you will. :)

[SaoirseRN]

I was watching an episode of "Bones" from a couple of weeks ago, and when Bones was shot and in (presumably) the ICU. She coded, and of course although she is monitored nobody was nearby, but I give credit to the show that Angela yelled for a nurse to come help, not a doctor, which is consistent with the reality that doctors aren't always *right there* in most or many cases depending on the department.

Also -- her side rails were UP!

[LadyFree28, BSN, LPN, RN]

I was watching an episode of "Bones" from a couple of weeks ago, and when Bones was shot and in (presumably) the ICU. She coded, and of course although she is monitored nobody was nearby, but I give credit to the show that Angela yelled for a nurse to come help, not a doctor, which is consistent with the reality that doctors aren't always *right there* in most or many cases depending on the department.

Also -- her side rails were UP!

^Ahhh...there IS hope!!!

[Do-over, ASN, RN]

I was watching an episode of "Bones" from a couple of weeks ago, and when Bones was shot and in (presumably) the ICU. She coded, and of course although she is monitored nobody was nearby, but I give credit to the show that Angela yelled for a nurse to come help, not a doctor, which is consistent with the reality that doctors aren't always *right there* in most or many cases depending on the department.

Also -- her side rails were UP!

Well, Bones is one of the best shows ever.

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

I'm watching this episode of ER now where they're trying to treat a kid for rabies... and they have him paralyzed/sedated ready to intubate and then realize one of the meds they want to give him "can only be given PO." So the INTERN takes the oral syringe from the nurse says "hey buddy, wake up and take this", shoves the medication in the kid's mouth and then after the kid appears to aspirate, they say "oh, maybe we should drop an NG?" Ya think?

[lindseylpn]

I remember seeing on an episode of House one of the drs said that the reason his team of drs do all the "nurses" work is because House doesn't trust nurses.