I’m not a big fan of medical dramas. From my earliest memory as a child, I can recall my mother’s whimsy with the TV show “Medical Center”. At the tender age of five, I never really understood her fascination with the show at that time (although I’m sure the eye candy was a big part of the draw for her, if you know what I mean); perhaps it was the fact that she was a registered nurse and could relate on some visceral level. Okay, that’s probably stretching things a bit — as medical dramas in the 1970s didn’t utilize the high-powered medical knowledge and muster of physician consultants in the manner they do today.

Well, one would think in this age of “transparency” and disclosure among source materials for dramatization, consultants would make sure medical pathology portrayed on television would be as accurate as possible. Don’t they owe it to the audience (along with a riveting storyline)? According to a study getting some Internet meme ink, they do.

There were 59 seizures in the 327 episodes included in the study. Inappropriate responses — such as holding a patient down, trying to stop involuntary movement, or putting something in the person’s mouth — occurred in about 46 percent of the seizure depictions. Appropriate first-aid management was shown about 29 percent of the time, while the appropriateness of first aid couldn’t be determined in 25 percent of the seizure scenes, the study authors noted.

Using current and relatively recent dramas as subjects for the study, the authors note that emergency first aid for seizure was appropriately given about 50% of the time. Perhaps the bigger issue here is why this was studied in the first place. If society relied on medical drama to provide the appropriate instruction rather than, say, medical school; then healthcare reform would probably take on an entirely different meaning. | LINK

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