Ridiculous medical mistakes on TV

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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 ER OR LTC Code Blue Trauma Dog.

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!

5 Votes
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.

3 Votes

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.

3 Votes
Specializes in retired LTC.

One TV soap opera show has remained with me for many years. The fresh post-op brain surgery pt is lying in bed with head all wrapped up (top to neck and looking like The Mummy) and there were 2 ekg leads on the gauze.

And I'm always fascinated by the way oral airways/tubes and nasogastric tubes are TAPED. Like was there a shortage of tape avail?!?!

Or they're not taped at all!!!

2 Votes
Specializes in Psychiatry/Mental Health.
On 3/25/2019 at 5:23 PM, DowntheRiver said:

I like how on Nurse Nic's jacket it says her NAME, BSN, NP.

Uh, no. So wrong.

Never noticed! Now I'll have to keep an eye out!

1 Votes
Specializes in Psychiatry/Mental Health.

We started (and stopped) watching "The Night Shift" this week. It is so bad. One doctor sanitized his gloves, they had a patient who they (loudly) referred to as "the junkie", another doctor takes off her pants at a work function (in video, take caution), doctors touching everything with their gloves, including their faces, ugh.

1 Votes
Specializes in Long Term Care.

I hate when there's a code and they have a patient in a semi fowlers position.

2 Votes
Specializes in retired LTC.
3 hours ago, EVA POPLEWSKI said:

I hate when there's a code and they have a patient in a semi fowlers position.

This is a real oldie but goodie.!! I remember this even from General Hospital with Luke & Laura (wedding days times).

2 Votes
On 8/21/2019 at 10:29 PM, Crash_Cart said:

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!

Yet patients rip out their IV'S all the time and no one cares.

On Elementary a few weeks ago Sherlock gave a medically correct aside about you cannot absorb fentanyl through your skin by touching it as in a drug bust .

1 Votes

Has anyone watched The Doctor?

Specializes in Hospice, corrections, psychiatry, rehab, LTC.

A couple of days ago I watched an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond entitled Sweet Charity. Ray was volunteering in a hospital, and he immediately expressed a phobia about blood. A nurse walks up to the counter, slaps down a bag of blood - with tubing attached - and says "This is for the fridge." Later Ray is assigned to a lonely older woman who won't take her pills. His job is to convince her to take them so that her health will improve. When he walks into the room, the pills are just sitting on the bedside table in a large soufflé cup (the kind usually used for water).

I understand that it's a comedy and things are done for comic effect, but still.

1 Votes
Specializes in retired LTC.

This afternoon, was watching an old rerun of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. The perpetrator was supposed to have a piece of glass from the crime imbedded in his neck. The detectives wanted to compare that glass to the victim's crime scene glass. The perp and attorney were arguing in front of a judge that it was possible that there was NO glass and the procedure was invasive. The judge agreed so the DA and detectives then wanted an XRAY and the judge agreed.

Doesn't glass NOT visualize on xray??? I always thought it didn't.

I could be wrong.

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