We've all heard it: nurses can't watch medical shows without getting annoyed about how inaccurate they are. Lately, I'm finding that the most ridiculous medical mistakes happen on police procedural dramas (Law and Order, Criminal Minds, etc.); at least the medical shows have people with medical backgrounds advising them.
Anybody have some funny tv medical mistakes to share??
Last week I was watching a rerun of Criminal Minds. The victim had been drugged with haldol by her kidnapper. When the police rushed in to save her, the EMS gave her a bolus of narcan and she magically awoke. It was a flipping miracle!! ?
Specializes in Hospice, corrections, psychiatry, rehab, LTC.
I hated my OB rotation in nursing school. Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (specifically, the sketch on The Miracle of Birth) got me through it. They parody a lot of the things talked about in this thread (such as filling the room with useless equipment, only to find that the patient isn't there yet), the "machine that goes ping!" (that serves no other apparent purpose), and "bring the most expensive machine in the hospital, in case the administrator comes." MP's Graham Chapman was a physician before going into comedy, and I'm sure that he had a major hand in the jokes that were included in the sketch.
I can’t remember if it was a movie or tv show that I saw on tv recently but they made a point of the patient needing IV access and fluids. I was looking at the tubing used on the set for the IV and realized why it looked so off-the “bag” was a tube feeding bag, same one that I had a home health patient using in recent years, and they acted like the were hooking up the tubing just after getting IV access-it was definitely the tube feeding device. I wonder if they realized this before they aired it because it looked ridiculous.
Just watched a movie called Black Mass. Great movie, but I was jolted by a crazy error. The main character's 6-year-old son develops Reye Syndrome and is supposedly brain dead and on "life support"...which consists of nothing but the boy lying motionless in bed wearing a face mask. I could not just let that one go.
I’m watching this new show called The Inbetween. The latest episode had a woman in a coma. First visit she was in O2. Next visit, no O2. Has an IV pump and tubing, but pt had no IV access. Hospital administrator is the only one who controls the ID badges that are used to access medications. And if his girl friend, who is an RN at the hospital, is scheduled for a night shift he calls her manager and it is removed.
Or the person who has diabetes and if they don't get their insulin before they eat, they'll get hypoglycemic and die (because hypoglycemic is apparently easier to understand and way more dramatic)
I seem to remember Jodie Foster's daughter in Panic Room needing her insulin because her blood sugar was dropping.
Apparently whenever a pt tries to rip off their EKG leads, people around them must immediately restrain and fight with them to stop doing this because you know, they would otherwise instantly die!
Specializes in Hospice, corrections, psychiatry, rehab, LTC.
I realize that this is a comedy, and realism isn't paramount, but in Airplane, a woman with a guitar begins to sing to a child who has an IV hanging. As she swings the neck of the guitar, she knocks the IV out, and the child instantly begins crashing.
I watched a show the other night called The Resident. A lady who had just delivered was obviously suffering massive bleeding but was being ignored because the OB was prejudiced against African Americans. The decision was finally made when her pressure was 80 to get her to the OR quick, so the four residents, the husband and the nurse dash off to the OR, leaving the baby alone in the crib in the patient's room, crying its head off.
Orca, ADN, ASN, RN
2,066 Posts
I hated my OB rotation in nursing school. Monty Python's The Meaning of Life (specifically, the sketch on The Miracle of Birth) got me through it. They parody a lot of the things talked about in this thread (such as filling the room with useless equipment, only to find that the patient isn't there yet), the "machine that goes ping!" (that serves no other apparent purpose), and "bring the most expensive machine in the hospital, in case the administrator comes." MP's Graham Chapman was a physician before going into comedy, and I'm sure that he had a major hand in the jokes that were included in the sketch.