This Week in Medical Show Critique - I Play a Doctor on TV - BUT Do I ever Wear a Mask????

Hi everyone -

I thought I'd once again do a little critique on the medical mistakes we see on TV. Maybe you've seen some as well - if so feel free to post them here.

It's kind of funny to think we live this every day and some of the shows do a really good job, others not so much. But I still love to watch them - for me, it's more about escapism - I love it when they make me laugh and cry. I still do have the urge to scream though when they're doing a great job and then mess up - medically speaking.

So the theme of the last week or so shows seem to be their ability to screw up the use of masks - any kind of masks.

First I was watching Three Rivers - which I love. The medical consultants were doing such a great job with all medical aspects of the show. I was very impressed with their portrayal of the "John Ritter syndrome" case. The patient was having chest pain and had ST elevation on his EKG. The star of the show wanted to wait for the CXR results - but oh no, the other doctor just wanted to give TNK and head to the cath. lab. Oops - guess what - dissecting aneurysm and now the thought of this patient dying on the table.

After a lot of show casing - first they tried a balloon expandable stent graft - which I must say was pretty amazing to watch. I've never seen one in person - but they used fluoroscopy and it showed it in real time which was way cool. Of course, it didn't really work.

A few hours later when the patient was ready to crash, they cut him open and repaired it surgically - of course after giving him lots of FFP to reverse the thrombolytics they had pumped him full of earlier. And success, the patient lived. All in all, pretty impressive.

So it was with great dismay that they could pull something off this complicated, and they can't put a nonrebreather mask on correctly - it was flat as a pancake. The whole scene was killing me - I was saying, "could you please blow that darn bag up just a little so the patient doesn't suffocate?"


Then the next show was Mercy. Again, loving this show. Love all the drama - all the dysfunctional family dynamics and all the whackiness of some of the characters.
I also think they do pretty good with the nursing aspects - they're not too over the top. They do just basic medical things so far, a lot of bedside stuff and stay away from portraying complicated medical practices.

So this show was about a chemo patient who was going to get a bone marrow transplant. They were sooo good in portraying the cleanness of the room - the patient's kids had given her a teddy bear and it was in plastic. The staff all had on gowns and hats and shoe covers and MASKS - but they were around their necks. Now, why oh why go to so much trouble to show the white room but make it not so white. lol. Now, I know they're actors and we want and need to see their faces - but ...... oh well.

And one more thought on last week's Mercy. I don't think we needed to give the family another blow to deal with - they're already dysfunctional enough - they didn't have to give the dad Alzheimers too.

And by the way - can you say hot fireman-nurse sex in the storage closet? Oh yes they did.
Of course, they hit the nail on the head about the whole firemen thing. They made him a hot dog - and what I mean by that - he's hot - but he's a dog - he's married and the nurse he's having sex with in the closet doesn't know. And all her nurse friends told her not to fall for him - "he's just to play with, not to get hooked on." lol

Anyway, off this thing for now. Just having some fun. Got a diamond today !