Forbes magazine online has a nice slide show about TV Medical Missteps. Yes, I’m not the only one who’s noticed Dr. Jollywood “jollywoodizing” health and medical care. How hard is it to have a medical adviser read a script, and in most cases, making changes to remove the idiocy and make it more authentic will not cost more money and will probably make viewers happier.

One misstep that they mention is the reality of nursing. Yes, in Dr. Jollywoodland, physicians often do the work of nurses, particularly if they happen to be the star of the show. On ER, patients are often handed off for treatment by paramedics without the help of any nurses. Yup, that’s just how it is. The physician is standing around and waiting for the ambulance, and does the blood draws, hooks the patients up to a monitor, does all the triage, puts the chart together. La la la….

Another idiocy is that physicians often hire and fire nurses on TV shows. The only time I can imagine that happening is if the nurse is working in a private physician’s office, and he or she would then be the boss. Otherwise, physicians have absolutely nothing to do with staffing in a hospital. A nurse cannot be fired by a doctor, just like the doctor can’t be fired by the nurse.

Another TV plague is the super intern syndrome.

On shows such as ER, medical interns often end up alone with a patient who crashes and needs a dramatic, difficult procedure in order to survive. In reality, it’s very rare that an intern would be left alone to do something beyond his or her capability, Safirstein says. In most cases, senior physicians are on hand to guide them through their work step by step

Then there’s ER Drama! Most shows do their best to convince the audience that daily life in the ER is one of gunshots, stabbings, riots, mentally ill patients gone haywire, fires, bombings, terrorist attacks…basically, the excitement that just won’t quit. While violent incidents occasionally happen, most times the ER is just busy and monotonous, filled with patients with non-descript pains and fevers, some broken bones, maybe an out of control asthma case. And the ER staff, especially the docs, do not provide a full service menu. I know, in the world of Dr. Jollywood, patients basically move into the ER and receive all their care in there by the same dedicated physician who never goes home. ER docs on TV can do everything–brain surgery, organ transplants, diagnose a complicated case of Lhassa fever without even doing any labs, and they do it all themselves without the help of pesky nurses or techs.

In reality, patients are triaged and stabilized in the ER, and then either admitted to the hospital and transferred to the appropriate unit or sent home. That’s not very exciting, but that’s how it goes.