Of course we can’t expect all television shows and movies to always accurately portray various professions. But with so many centered around a medical theme, those who work in healthcare are often left with the notion, “That’s not how it really works at all.”
Dr. Nikki Stamp, a cardiothoracic surgeon in Australia, voiced her take on the matter on the KevinMD blog. Here are some of her specific references to neglected facts displayed on the little and big screen.
Every medical show or movie ever: Everyone who has a cardiac arrest gets a minute of (sub-par) CPR and a shock and then coughs and wakes up. This one upsets me the most because when it really happens, it’s not a happy ending. It’s really sad explaining to families that we did CPR but things didn’t work out. Or that not everyone’s heart can be restarted (or should be) with a shock called a defibrillation. The survival for an out of hospital cardiac arrest is around 10 percent. However, I hope that seeing CPR on TV or at the movies encourages people to learn CPR. It may very well save a life. I’m also thrilled to see so many places now having automated defibrillators. It may give a few people a real chance of making it.
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The next one would probably be true in her consideration of Nurse Jackie, too, despite the fact the show has been regularly praised for its accurate depiction of nursing.
House MD: You just cannot be addicted to painkillers and still employed. I feel pretty confident to say that if a patient upsets you and you insult them, even humorously and with a razor-sharp wit, you would be in a lot of trouble. Same goes for your colleagues. The medical profession takes substance abuse pretty seriously, and Gregory House would have been parked in rehabilitation and his services declined with his opiate addiction. Brilliant as he may be, anyone with such a serious problem would be directed to the appropriate services. And, by the way, House, it’s not lupus. It’s never lupus.
Like Stamp, many of us appreciate the intensity of the next scene, but alas, not an accurate depiction from the perspective of a cardiothoracic surgeon.
Pulp Fiction: Stabbing someone with adrenaline in the heart will not cure their OD. I feel like I’m telling a whole bunch of kids that Santa is well, you know. And if John Travolta stabbing Uma Thurman in the heart isn’t one of the best damn scenes ever, well I don’t know what is. But let me reassure you, that will not work. Now, in cardiac surgery, I have given intracardiac adrenaline before, but that is with and open chest, where I can directly see the heart and when things are not going very well at all. But that is pretty uncommonly used really. Plus, a needle into someone’s heart can make the heart bleed, and the bleeding squashes the heart causing a condition called cardiac tamponade. So in reality, about an hour or two later, Uma’s heart would have stopped and Marcellus Wallace would have been seriously unimpressed.
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And here are some more basic distinctions most viewers probably don’t think twice about:
Every movie or TV show ever: If you are in a coma, you need a breathing tube, not a little bit of oxygen up your nose. This really grates me. If you are in a coma, you generally cannot breath for yourself. So we put a tube down your throat and breathe for you. Nasal prongs are so seriously pointless and downright negligent. I get it though; the marvelously attractive actor would not look so nice with a piece of plastic down their mouth.
Every movie or TV show ever: “Flatlining” is not called flatlining, it is called asystole. And it cannot be fixed with a shock. Flatlining is one of those funny lay terms that if you hear being shouted in a hospital, you should turn the TV down. A flat line on a monitor means the monitor is disconnected, or the patient has asystole where the heart has no electrical or mechanical activity at all. Unfortunately, this cannot be fixed by a defibrillator shock.
Stamp declared at the end of her post that she’s going to start watching legal shows instead.
