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!! ?
I just introduced my little people to the X Files. Episode 3(ish), they find a girl who had gone missing. Scully shouts out, "She's alive! She's just unconscious!" All the while she's doing chest compressions (horribly shallow and slow ones at that).
And I love how EVERYONE is trained to do a chest thump. Yeah. Ok.
On Nurse Jackie, they got a new ER doc, and EMS brings in a coding patient. The MD runs up, thumps the patient, the patient snaps out of the rhythm for like, 3 seconds. So when you're all like, that's so cool that worked!, the patient codes immediately again and the MD shrugs and says (paraphrased), "I always wanted to try that. It's looks so neat." lol
One mistake that always bothered me was in one episode of Grey's Anatomy, Dr. Bailey opened up a pair of sterile gloves and picked them up to adjust them in the package and patted them with her bare hands. All I could think was "WHY are you touching all up on your sterile gloves?!" not to mention all the "CPR" on that show too
Or how when a police officer stumbles upon someone bleeding, they immediately put pressure on the wound bare handed.
I come from a family of police officers. In my grandfathers day, he would have done that. All the younger ones won't even answer a noise complaint without gloves on. Lol they're trained in OSHA and infection control too.
I just introduced my little people to the X Files. Episode 3(ish), they find a girl who had gone missing. Scully shouts out, "She's alive! She's just unconscious!" All the while she's doing chest compressions (horribly shallow and slow ones at that).
Oh dear Lord, and she's supposed to be a medical doctor in that show.
PS I remember that episode of SVU. Don't be hating on Elliot Stabler. I have a passionate love affair with that man.
I hate all the pregnancy and baby crap on shows. The way they show someone's water breaking and OH MY GOD SHE'S HAVING THE BABY NOW! crap, esp if it is the character's first baby. And there's barely any blood at the delivery, and the kid looks like a 4-month-old instead of a squishy gooey elf (because it is a 4mo old child actor). If on the off chance the show actually depicts the character having a labor lasting more than 24 minutes, the doctor is there the entire time coaching the patient through her contractions.
Or those reality birth shows, how they sensationalize everything. "The baby's heart rate is dangerously low, forcing the doctors to make some life or death decisions." Puhleeeze, they're just variables and the FHR is fine otherwise. Or, "a scary situation at delivery, with the cord wrapped around the baby's neck".....grrrr, do you know how many nuchal cords I see in one day??
For this reason I don't watch medical fiction shows and I stay far far away from crap like A Birth Story.
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
My personal pet peeve is Liz Webber Lansing Webber Spencer Webber on General Hospital. One day she's an artist and the next day she decides to be a nurse. Within months, she's "the best nurse at General Hospital." Must be -- she's in the ER, the OR, the ICU, L & D -- no matter why a patient is admitted to the hospital, she's his nurse.
Alexis Davis' two year old is admitted for leukemia and they're scrambling for bone marrow donors. Of course, at that point, Alexis has to admit that Sonny is the kid's biological father and not Ned, whose name is on the birth certificate. Ned's eldest daughter, Brooke Lynn comes to visit her little sister and Liz smugly tells her she can't visit because she isn't really a family member. REALLY? Is that not a breach of HIPPO or something? And is that the way you'd want YOUR kid to learn that your husband isn't really his father, but the local mob enforcer IS?
Don't even get me started on the breaks, overtime shifts, etc. Liz is probably the only nurse I know of who shows up at work when she wants to -- any time she wants to get out of doing something else -- and goes on her "break" with stilettos and a cocktail dress to have a 4 martini lunch at the local five star hotel. Or takes "the launch" to Spoon Island to drop in on Nikolas and then has to leave to "get back to work" because her "break" is over. Wish I had breaks like that! (Or even actual breaks!). She gets fired for attendance issues (fails to show up for work because she's "got something I have to take care of" which probably entailed spying on her current heart throb to see who else he's up to) and everyone screeches that "it's so unfair" because "you're the best nurse General Hospital has ever had." Not to worry -- the local millionaire gets her her job back by threatening to "withdraw his support" from the hospital. And she STILL won't show up for work when she's supposed to if she's got something up in her love life. And it wouldn't be a soap opera without something up in your love life.
OK. I'll take a breath now.
Even CARLY was more reliable, and she flunked out of nursing school in her first semester.
I remember watching an episode of House where the Medical Director was holding the patient's hand comforting him WHILE they were fibrillating him.
My favorite is an ad for a nursing school around here where the "student" smiles and puts on her stethoscope upside down as she talks about how much she loves caring for her patients and learning about being a nurse.
ixchel
4,547 Posts
I just introduced my little people to the X Files. Episode 3(ish), they find a girl who had gone missing. Scully shouts out, "She's alive! She's just unconscious!" All the while she's doing chest compressions (horribly shallow and slow ones at that).