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Here are some of my medical pet peeves

Since I’ve been asked to (and I like to yell about medical inaccuracies anyway) I’m going to talk about a few of my pet peeves when it comes to the portrayal of medicine in popular media. I’d also like to address some real life misconceptions I’ve come across, though this is all based on my personal experiences. I recognize that these are mostly done for The Drama™ but it really makes it difficult for me to take whatever you’re writing seriously as soon as it employs any of the following.

1. Your doctor will spend a lot of time with you and hold your hand every step of the way.

99.9% of the time the medical professional you’ll spend your time with will be your nurse. Doctors at hospitals will physically check in on their patients maybe once a day if you’re lucky (or very unlucky). Unless you have a meeting scheduled, or something is very wrong with you, your doctor most likely will pop in and out for a total of 5 minutes. I’m not saying this is true of every single doctor ever, but they’re generally very busy people, and you’re one of maybe forty people they need to see that day. Whenever I see three doctors helping one patient get up to walk for the first time on TV I sigh deeply to myself because I guarantee you 9.9/10 times the doctor will never see the patient walk and will just take the nurse and physiotherapists’ word about how the patient is walking. There are, of course, doctors who go above and beyond, I’m just speaking in a general sense from what I’ve experienced. To put this in perspective, I used to work at a place where the doctors just trusted the patient was dead if I called and told them my patient died overnight (if it was an expected death). They would come in the morning to sign the paperwork without ever seeing the body themselves. While you’d hope I’d be able to tell if someone was dead, it just goes to show you that doctors have a lot on their plate and can’t always come to make sure things are right.

2. Defibrillation (shocking the heart) starts the heart when someone’s died.

We all know the scenario: there’s a flat line on the monitor and suddenly the doctor pulls out some big paddles and yells “clear!” as they bring them down on the patient’s chest. They do this once or twice and suddenly, boom! The lines on the screen are moving again (that’s good, right?) and the person is opening their eyes. This one is a pretty nit-picky one, but it’s one that almost every medical professional I know has complained about at least once. Here’s the thing: shocking a person (or, defibrillating, if we’re using the fancy terminology) doesn’t start their heart. Shocking a person actually stops their heart, and we’re banking on the heart restarting itself in the right rhythm. Much like turning a computer off and then on again, shocking a person is like shutting your heart down to give it a chance to reboot and recalibrate. What starts your heart again (if it does start again) are the nerves that make your heart beat in the first place. Also, we don’t always shock people. In fact, the only reason we shock someone is if their heart is already beating, but it’s beating in a way that’s not circulating blood. This can be because their heart is beating erratically, too quickly, too slowly, or any combination thereof. There are a lot of factors that go into CPR, which brings me to my next point.

3. CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) is super effective.

Don’t we all wish it were like in the movies where you push on a person’s chest a few times, shock them, and then they’re right as rain? Movies and TV make CPR look so easy and quick, but in reality CPR is pretty brutal, and most people who have CPR performed on them don’t make it. There are a lot of reasons behind this from the general age of people (most of the time they’re elderly and frail) to the situation that put the person in need of CPR in the first place (usually traumatic if they’re a younger person) but the unfortunate truth of it all is that most people don’t survive CPR. CPR is a lot harder on the body than most people give it credit for – we’re literally breaking ribs in some cases, and giving some pretty rough drugs to try and encourage you back to the land of the living. Even if we manage to get a useful pulse back, the odds of a person making a full recovery are pretty slim.

4. If you get stabbed you should pull the object out.

Anyone with even basic first aid training will tell you DO. NOT. DO. THIS. You can cause more damage pulling the object out than leaving it in, and in some cases the object is actually helping to make sure you bleed less by keeping the wound as closed as it’s going to get. Your best bet is stabilizing whatever is sticking out of you and wrapping around the area, then getting medical help ASAP.

5. Nurses are just there to help the doctor.

If you’ll let me get up on my soapbox for a second, nurses and doctors work as a team to try and ensure our patients get the best care possible. Nurses are the eyes and ears since we’re generally the profession that spends the most time with patients, so we report to the doctor about our concerns and try to figure out the best course of action. Like I said before, most of your interactions in the hospital will be with a nurse, but you’ll also see us out and about in other places like clinics, schools, community centres, etc. The doctors may make the orders, but the nurses are generally the ones that gave them the information to make those decisions, and are also the ones that have to carry those orders out. There are also different classifications of nurses who are able to do different things. I’m in school right now for my Nurse Practitioner’s, which would allow me to open my own clinic, prescribe medications, and order tests among other things. It’s really important that nurses and doctors have respect for each other, otherwise important information can be missed and patients’ care suffers. There are also tons of other members of the team like personal support workers (PSWs), respiratory therapists, social workers, clergy etc. who all contribute to patients’ care.

That’s pretty much all I can think of for now, but if I happen to think of any (or if there’s a lot of similar questions about something) I may add more. I also love talking about medical slang and jargon, so if anyone is curious feel free to hit me up! I could even post a list of some of the most frequent slang I used when working if anyone’s particularly interested.

Have fun and let’s get dirty! -Mod Raine

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