What nursing or medical pet peeves drive you bonkers in movies or on TV?
I find myself yelling at the tv and huffing about how wrong they got everything.
For example, when people rip out their IV's but don't bleed. Or ETT that are not taped down. AT ALL. Or when they shock a flatline. Or when nurses and doctors run for even the most minor things. Code patients who wake up looking refreshed and alert/oriented. Oh! And when doctors do things like start IVs or clean up vomit (yeah, right).
When 4 month old babies are presented as newborns!
Never understood why. If 6 weeks of age is considered old enough to be enrolled full time in a daycare facility, then surely it is old enough to be cast for 38 seconds on a TV show. And they would look much more "newborn"
I was watching a medical show last night and can't stand when they come home from working in the ER, dealing with blood and guts all day, then casually slump into their couch to crack open a beer and discuss the days happenings with their spouse...in the scrubs they wore to work. Grosses me out beyond measure. All I can keep thinking is, "great, now they gotta burn that couch"
We've actually done that with a cranial bone flap. We literally picked it up off the floor, soaked it in betadine, then rinsed it in bacitracin irrigation, and put it back in place.
That actually happened to my Mom during surgery to remove a huge tumor. Surgeon owned up to it, saying it was his decision to do that rather than replace it with PMMA or another prosthetic flap. Eight years later and she's doing great! We never did tell her that a piece of her skull hit the floor and was "washed off" lol!
Of course it's not (like the movies). I'm sure that physicians, cops, attorneys, schoolteachers, etc., feel the same way about how they are portrayed on TV and in the movies. It's entertainment.
I laugh when I see out of shape actors play cops/ soldiers and pretend to clear a room with their gun
Specializes in Surgery Vascular/Endovascular/Trauma.
you know what I just thought of? when you watch the credits roll at the end, there is always a medical consultant on board...so it makes you wonder how any of these discrepancies made it past that person???
I think that the medical consultant tries to keep the realism in the show but gets over ruled by director/actors who want to have "Drama" or in the Actors case more face time on the screen. I still deal with new residents who scrub with their mask hanging down (like the Surgeons in Greys Anatomy) and try to enter the operating room. I personally try my best to embarrass the heck out of these "newbies" when they try to do this to teach them that they need to Observe what the real Doctors Are Doing.
Specializes in Surgery Vascular/Endovascular/Trauma.
Quote:
We've actually done that with a cranial bone flap. We literally picked it up off the floor, soaked it in betadine, then rinsed it in bacitracin irrigation, and put it back in place.
That actually happened to my Mom during surgery to remove a huge tumor. Surgeon owned up to it, saying it was his decision to do that rather than replace it with PMMA or another prosthetic flap. Eight years later and she's doing great! We never did tell her that a piece of her skull hit the floor and was "washed off" lol!
In my day.... We would autoclave the bone flap for 15 min then cool it off, and "voila!" Screw it back into place. No infections ever occurred using this practice (although the smell from the autoclave was kinda strange......)
It kills me that nobody wants to go home after a shift. The characters just stay at the hospital for hours, I guess, not being paid. The physicians sit with the pt all night long in case there a change in condition.
My pet peeve? That one of the best shows depicting nurses was cancelled! Hbo's Getting On was great. Also loved they also had great Lpn representation in the character of Nurse Didi. Lpns are never in movie or tv shows and here was Nurse Didi. ..probably best nurse on TV. Period. And it was cancelled. But Grey's is still going strong with hardly a nurse in sight!
Ummm why does Princeton PMC (House) have like 3 nurses in the ICU and they are generally incompetent and doing nothing? And the patients travel several times a day for procedures sans RRT or nursing accompanying. And no nurses in cath lab....really the list goes on.
I love how the doctors do everything on House. They give all the meds, run all the tests and procedures, start all the IVs, draw the blood. I'm like, well dang, I guess nurses, CNAs, respiratory, transport, IV therapy, and technicians all over can just go home!
I was watching a medical show last night and can't stand when they come home from working in the ER, dealing with blood and guts all day, then casually slump into their couch to crack open a beer and discuss the days happenings with their spouse...in the scrubs they wore to work. Grosses me out beyond measure. All I can keep thinking is, "great, now they gotta burn that couch"
But Grey's is still going strong with hardly a nurse in sight!
BeenThere2012, ASN, RN
863 Posts
When 4 month old babies are presented as newborns!