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

Nurses Relations

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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.

Specializes in Float Pool-Med-Surg, Telemetry, IMCU.

My significant other got hooked on Grey's Anatomy in med school. I give her a pretty hard time about it so I'm usually banished from the TV room after a few "yeah rights" and "oh pleases". She is able to dismiss the inaccuracies and just focus on the entertainment value which is something I am unable to do; it irks me to watch depictions of doctors hanging IV bags and inserting foleys, etc. :sniff: Her pet peeve is Dr. Oz; I have never watched "The Doctors" so I'll reserve judgement.

"Nurse Jackie" is entertaining but there is absolutely no way she wouldn't be fired 20 times over in the real world. Edie Falco is pretty great, though.

"Mercy" was awful. There was an episode where the nurse performed an amputation...not realistic in the least!

And don't get me started on "House". If my doctor broke into my home to figure out what random toxin was causing my freak illness I would get a restraining order. :bluecry1:

Specializes in Pediatrics, Step-Down.

Is it bad after reading this entire thread I poured a glass of wine and immediately turned on an episode of Greys? ...guilty pleasure...

Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.
I'm about 99% sure a RN should not be doing that....I've never scene anyone but a MD intubate a patient.

*** Your hospital doesn't have CRNAs? I have worked in 5 states as an RN, alwasy ICU or ER or transport and very, very rarely see any MD (other than MDAs) intubate anyone. Usually when there is a STAT intubation needed a CRNA comes and does it. A very few times I have observed an ER physician or an ICU intensivists intubate in emergencies.

RNs most certainly CAN intubate. Of course there must be a hospital policy allowing them to do so, a training program and a comptetency mantience program. We (the RNs trained to intubate) have to do 30 supervised intubations a year and sit through a class each year taught by our chief CRNA to learn about airway managment advances. Last year we were trained to use the glide scope. Also place art lines and IJ central catheters. We have 5 RNs trained to intubate (all RRT RNs), and two of them are trained and privlaged to place art line and IJ central lines. I would love to be trained to do subclavian central lines and Swan PA catheters but as of now those and femoral lines are APRN, PA or physican only. In the hospital we are called "expanded roll RNs" but that is not official and by license we are just plain old RNs.

I don't watch any of these modern shows.

Do medical TV shows have the machines that go "blip" anymore?

Old TV medical shows always seemed to have at least one machine that went "blip" chirping all the time.

I don't even like shows like The Doctors and just can't tolerate Dr Oz with his following every new "brand new study says" stuff. And give me a break, he's an expert in ever area of medicine? People, just go to your personal physician please lol

He was pushing HCG injections as a weight loss method!! The FDA says that using this product for weight loss is "reckless", scientifically unfounded, "hazardous", "illegal", an old concept that was rejected decades ago, and advises users to "stop using it, throw it out, and stop following the dieting instructions." HCG Diet Products Are Illegal

Dr. Oz has enraged me on numerous occasions. I actually have to leave the break room when he's on. I used to work at his hospital and it would bother me to no end when people would ask me about him. I have no idea but if I had to guess, he's half full of sh*t and half full of himself to have the nerve to so consistently pass off inaccurate information as medical advice.

Like another poster brought up, medical shows aren't the only career shown inaccurately. All those crime dramas, I imagine cops, lawyers, crime scene investigators are yelling at the TV too!

Ha!

My husband cannot watch "Cops". He says it's sanitized. He almost got to be on the show but his department decided to put the kabosh on it. Darn!

He also cannot watch that process server guy on whatever reality show that is. I can't even think of what it's called. Anyway, it is ridiculous because process serving (while it can get dangerous and confrontational) is usually very ho-hum.

He is also a PI and he actually loves old PI shows. They are over-the-top, but those don't bother him for some reason.

Anyway, yes, other careers have their share of misrepresentation.

Remember "Emergency!"? Now, that was a quaint/cheezy little show from back in the day. There was one episode that sticks out in my mind. There was a scene where Julie London's character (nurse) tells off the doc for being hard on her newbie nurse trainee... and I was like, "yeah!" :laugh:

I always wished "Dirty Jobs" could have come to my work... but obviously that couldn't happen! Besides privacy, I don't know if the public really wants to know what we do!

I always wished "Dirty Jobs" could have come to my work... but obviously that couldn't happen! Besides privacy, I don't know if the public really wants to know what we do!

Thought that.

Specializes in OB-Gyn/Primary Care/Ambulatory Leadership.
I'm about 99% sure a RN should not be doing that....I've never scene anyone but a MD intubate a patient.

Where I work, infants are intubated pretty frequently, and it's definitely NOT in the RN's scope of practice (speaking of NON-APRNs)

Specializes in Emergency, Telemetry, Transplant.
Where I work, infants are intubated pretty frequently, and it's definitely NOT in the RN's scope of practice (speaking of NON-APRNs)

And having watched some fictional medical shows, it is pretty obvious that scope of practice does not matter at all. Their motto is "do whatever you want as long as you think it best for the patient. Ehh, who cares about what happens to that license?"

Specializes in IMC.

Thought that.

I would watch that episode as Mike Rowe is describing the types of 'poo' he encounters!

Specializes in burn ICU, SICU, ER, Trauma Rapid Response.
Where I work, infants are intubated pretty frequently, and it's definitely NOT in the RN's scope of practice (speaking of NON-APRNs)

*** Your particular hospital's policies and your scope of practice under your states nurse practice act are seperate and unrelated. Since you say "scope of practice" you must be refering to your state's nurse practice act. I would love to know what state you work in that bans RNs intubating under the nurse practice act. Does that mean that none of the helicopter or ground mobile intensive care units have nurses on them? No flight nurses? I am pretty sure you can't have a mobile intensive care without an RN on the rig.

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.

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