Everything Wrong With All Medical Movies and TV Shows

Anonymous
Everything Wrong With All Medical Movies and TV Shows

1. Medical professionals freak out in the ER

If an EMT, surgeon, doctor, or nurse is freaking out and panicking and running all over the place whilst treating you, they probably shouldn't have that job. Real professionals have a)seen just about everything 10 times over b)have to be calm in order to try and keep you calm and c)generally speaking, they tend to know what they are doing or will get someone who does especially when liability comes into play.

2. Love affairs happen every week

If a medical professional likes their job, engaging in a love affair with a patient will most likely (read: definitely) get them fired. You are talking about ethics, balance of power issues, and a major lawsuit waiting to happen all wrapped up in one.

3. You're fully clothed

One of the first things to go in an ER or an ambulance is your clothing. Every time I see a medical show where a doctor is using a defibrillator or trying to do a procedure in an emergency situation and the patient is still clothed, that is not reality. EMT's and ER doctors/nurses do not give two craps about your modesty when it comes to trying to save your life. They also don't give two craps that you are wearing designer and/or for ladies, that you have a bra on. It all gets cut off with surgical scissors. You can easily slip out of consciousness in a medical emergency or a nurse/doctor may miss something if they are inhibited by your clothing. Losing precious seconds to save your life due to you still wearing your favorite jeans and t-shirt, is not a thing.

Everything Wrong With All Medical Movies and TV Shows

4. Shock to the heart

If you have flat-lined, this means you are probably dead (the accurate term is asystole). If a doctor ever says someone is asystole, their next course of action is NOT to grab a defibrillator as depicted by hundreds of medical movies/tv shows because that is not a shockable heart rhythm. If you've ever used a portable defibrillator, the machine will tell you that you can or cannot shock the heart, and if no, either the person is conscious and has a normal rhythm or they are nearing death or dead and CPR would be your only course of action outside of professional medical care. The survival rates for those that are asystole, are like maybe 1 person a year per hospital. Your survival rates with CPR alone outside of a hospital or emergency care center are also only like 10%...but lest you get discouraged in doing CPR, are you really going to sit there and not try (geeze, I'd hope not).

5. There is an abundance of free time

Surgeons, doctors, and nurses work some of the most punishing work schedules on earth. They are not just lounging around in a break room 4 times a day with a slice of pizza. If not doing medical care, it's doing paperwork, if not that it's trying get get sleep for the next day, and if not there is maybe a little time for their social lives, but not a wild rocking time because they can't afford to come into work drunk or otherwise messed up the next day because people's lives are literally in their hands.

6. You can walk into an OR

Other patients and other persons simply strolling into an OR or ER are not a thing. You see it literally all the time where some family member charges into these rooms on tv screaming and getting in the way...which is precisely why, among other things, you or anyone else would a)never be allowed in an OR and b) would be directed to a waiting room. Besides getting in the way of these professionals trying to save your loved ones lives, you are unclean. Like really, unclean. OR's in particular are sterile environments. You don't just walk in there in your clothes with your hair breezy in the wind and expect to do anything there. Can you smell the lawsuit?

Everything Wrong With All Medical Movies and TV Shows

7. Your doctor can do literally everything

Have any of these people ever been in a hospital? If you have, think about how much time your doctor actually spent in the room with you. It was probably a blink and you missed it situation and this does a HUGE disservice to the nurses who ARE with you and do a lot with you as a patient. That's not to knock your doctors, but they basically sweep in, diagnose, confirm your vitals via chart/a nurse, confirm your treatment plan, and they are gone because there are dozens of other patients in their care.

If they spent days by your bedside or sat and spoke to every family member in the room for hours at a time, what of their other patients. Doctors and surgeons also don't do your insurance work, they don't do autopsies, heart surgeons don't deliver babies, and they aren't checking your vitals. Every person in a hospital is specialized in what they do, and as such, they stay in their lanes for professional and liability reasons.

8. Drugs, alcohol, and hand tremors are allowed

Calling all liability insurance agents! If you are a surgeon and your fellow surgeon is doing coke in a back alley and you know about it, you are reporting them. No one wants to work on a team where someone on that team has a substance abuse problem or with a surgeon who has issue with his or her hands like a tremor. Do you want your surgeon coked up and cutting into your abdomen or with wobbly hands trying to do your brain surgery?!? Not only that, if you think you're being a friend, and not reporting this, you as a fellow doctor/surgeon could be in serious trouble and could lose your own job and ability to practice as well as them. Ethics+Liability here.

9. Medical residents have free reign in surgery and everything else

No. Just no.

Everything Wrong With All Medical Movies and TV Shows

10. You can be a 15 year old doctor

Although just about anything is possible, this one, not really. The youngest doctor was actually a 17 year old Ophthalmologist, however the reality for most is that due to the length of training and medical school required, most do not start their full on careers until they are 28+ years old.

Everything Wrong With All Medical Movies and TV Shows
32 Opinion