Joey M.D.

There are a lot of bloopers in shows featuring medical doctors. For doctors like us, such bloopers may be bordering on comedic. I’ve pointed some of these bloopers to my (non-doctor) brother and his response was that it was just a show, people won’t really remember the details of what the doctor did. But the thing is, people do get the wrong ideas somehow.

These mistakes are more glaring in the local movies or teleseryes but American TV is not without such mistakes either. Even if I do not watch TVs or movies often anymore, I still see a lot of these bloopers. Here are some samples from my limited repertoire.

These are some blatant mistakes I remember:

• Being able to talk while an ET tube is still inserted and patient is still hooked to a respirator. Then after talking, making kwentos and bilins, she breathed her last. And the first thing the relatives did was hug her and cry, they didn’t even think of calling a nurse or pressing the button to call the nurse. (Death scene of the character of Boots Anson-Roa in Mano Po)
• Patient wearing a mask is hooked to a respirator. Also, it’s an adult patient and they were using a pediatric sized mask. (Can’t remember which show this is on. It was an afternoon drama and I wasn’t even watching, napadaan lang ako and this scene was on)
• Patient became blind after having a head trauma, because there was a blood clot formed in the brain, presumably in the area serving the vision. She later recovers 20/20 vision due to an eye transplant. (Whoa! “Eye transplant”! For a central blindness where the eyes are perfectly all right. What they should have done was brain surgery to remove the clot. This is from a Claudine Barretto teleserye, Sa Dulo Ng Walang Hanggan)
• A classic: Wearing the ENT head mirror upside down –the mirror is supposed to be over the doctor’s eye to reflect the light from the back so that it reflects on what the doctor is examining. So much so that patients think that’s the right way to wear the head mirror. Nowadays, many ENTs prefer the head lamp. (I see this lots of times, even in cartoons)

Less obvious:

• Small hospital can do a bypass operation! (It was the teleserye with the babymaker theme. Kristine Hermosa stars in it. Her mother had to have a heart surgery so she needed the money thus sold her baby.)
• A gonioscopy lens (used by ophthalmologists to check the outflow mechanism of the eye, used in conjunction with a slit lamp) is used to check the extraocular muscle movement of Sigourney Weaver’s character in one of the Alien movies. Well, maybe only ophthalmologists would notice that such an expensive instrument is used for something that doesn’t need an instrument at all.
• Remember how to use the ophthalmoscope? Patient’s right eye–doctor’s right hand–doctor’s right eye. Otherwise you’d end up “kissing” the patient. In “Days of Thunder”, Nicole Kidman’s character was examining Tom Cruise’s character’s retinas. Observe how she does it.
• Oh, this is from House M.D. I don’t know if the other doctors have the same opinion about this. Anyway, in the pilot episode, Robin Tunney’s character had seizures and they could not find the cause of these seizures. Finally, they thought it might be Taenia solium (pork tapeworm) because of the pork products found in her home. They wanted to do some invasive test (brain biopsy?) to prove that she has this parasite in her brain but patient refused. Finally Dr. Chase suggested that they do an less invasive x-ray since the larvae might lodge in the muscles. Lo and behold, she had a larva in one of her leg muscles! Me, I was like…whoa! Didn’t they even think of doing a stool exam since Taenia solium is mainly an intestinal parasite? I guess they think it’s not dramatic enough.

I’m pretty sure there are a lot more bloopers out there. I’ve noticed these even though I don’t really watch these shows all the time. I must say that except for the occasional bloopers in the medical dramas, they don’t have as many. Maybe because they do try to do some research.

For the most part, they are simply hilarious, at least from the point of view of someone in the know. But sometimes, people get the wrong info, like “eye transplants” could be the cure to any type of blindness. A little blooper once in a while is okay, even forgivable if it’s not major. Because we do understand that not all researches give you all the info you need. But the major ones are really bad.

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This is my entry to this week’s The Blog Rounds (14th edition) hosted by Dr. Em Dy.