TV Shows

Depends on what type of hospital and where you work. That particular show recreates true stories from events that have happened. Although they are usually dramatized, there is a good amount of truth behind them. These kinds of stories usually originate from Large trauma centers from inner cities, but you still get your fair share of crazy crap from just about any ER you work in, from the large teaching hospitals to the small rural community hospitals.

Once you start working in the ER you will start to collect a whole bunch of crazy stories about what happens on a particular shift. You really just can't make some of this stuff up.

At first I though you meant shows like ER or Greys Anatomy. I was about to pop some popcorn and sit back and watch the flurry commence...

With that said, I think ALL reality shows are staged and scripted to some degree.

"Reality" shows pick and choose what they will air. While real life isn't edited, alas, TV shows are. It might take days of filming to get one shift's worth of TV material. You are watching the most sensational, most ratings-grabbing stuff they can put out there, hardly representative of 'real life'.

What gets to me is the question that everyone seems to ask in those reality medical shows. The pt/family asks - 'why did it take so long for the doctors to diagnose the conditon?" Sheesh ---- some of those diagnoses are so bizarre and infrequently rare that they probably didn't even exist 15 year ago!!! And it always takes a super duper specialist in a far away city to render the correct dx.

And I love those diagnoses - like idiosyncratic hyperthermoovocoagulopathicsomnastico (I made this one up; I think it's - randomly making hard-boiled eggs in your sleep!!!)

PLEASE! Give me reality! Not the drama! I know they have medical consultants on staffbut they need to do their jobs better. Just tonight, I caught a couple minutes of a M*A*S*H rerun. During a surgery, the pt arrests and Hawkeye administers such a horrific CPR precordial punch that he would have caused a fractured sternum with a probable flail chest /pnemothorax/tamponade. (Precordial thumps went out in the '70's and they were NEVER that traumatic!)

TV medical shows are just too sensationalized for me except to watch to catch the errors and try to guess the plot.

The most glaring error I've ever seen on a TV show/movie was on the movie Panic Room with Jodie Foster. The type one DM daughter was going into hypoglycemic shock and they kept saying they needed to get her INSULIN! And this was a MAJOR plot point for most the movie!

LOL three rivers has just made it to Australia and myself and my 2 flat mates an RN and a firefighter watched an episode of the show and were killing ourselves laughing.

A) the DOCTOR doing CPR with only one nurse in attendance who seemed to hold the defib paddles. Here a porter does CPR as other staff can do other things such as bloods meds procedures etc

B) stopping said CPR the doc was checking for BREATH sounds!!

C) the complete lack of other staff

but the bright light was Alex O'Loughlain drool!

LOL three rivers has just made it to Australia and myself and my 2 flat mates an RN and a firefighter watched an episode of the show and were killing ourselves laughing.

A) the DOCTOR doing CPR with only one nurse in attendance who seemed to hold the defib paddles. Here a porter does CPR as other staff can do other things such as bloods meds procedures etc

B) stopping said CPR the doc was checking for BREATH sounds!!

C) the complete lack of other staff

but the bright light was Alex O'Loughlain drool!

What show was this,, when and what channel??? Sounds like one I need to watch!

One episode of Trauma: Life in the ER was shot at my sister's ER (I saw her from behind, although she wasn't interviewed on camera). She said that the film crews told staff that they normally shoot for three weeks at a particular location, then edit the best bits together to make a good show. As far as action - they hit her hospital at a very busy time. After three days - as opposed to the usual three weeks - the crew said that they had more than enough footage and left.

The most glaring error I've ever seen on a TV show/movie was on the movie Panic Room with Jodie Foster. The type one DM daughter was going into hypoglycemic shock and they kept saying they needed to get her INSULIN! And this was a MAJOR plot point for most the movie!

I'm SO glad I'm not the only one who noticed that. Most movies and shows are ruined now because I'm always picking apart these bits of the movie. An uneducated person may think its thrilling, and I'm sitting back going, "that is not even possible! Who thinks these things up?!" How about those times when someone goes into VFib, the doctor calls out, "5 mg of Epi stat!" Nothing happens, "ok, call it, time of death.." makes me crack up.