POPULAR hospital dramas such as Casualty and ER are putting the medical profession under increasing pressure by giving the public hugely unrealistic expectations of a doctor’s ability to resuscitate a patient.
Members of the British Medical Association yesterday called on television makers to show greater responsibilty when dealing with resuscitation, which they said was commonly portrayed as successful without risks and side-effects.
Doctors said that patients and relatives expected miraculous recoveries from cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), which includes mouth-tomouth resuscitation and electric shock treatment.
Speaking at the conference in Manchester, Andrew Thomson, a GP from Dundee, said that ER, Casualty, Holby City and Chicago Hope typically showed two outcomes — death or full recovery. “This is a terrible distortion of the truth,” Dr Thomson said.
He proposed a motion calling on the Government to balance the “sugar-coated” media portrayal of CPR, which was supported overwhelmingly. “Less than half of patients whose hearts stop in hospital survive the initial event, and of those who survive only a third live to discharge,” he said. “CPR can and does work, but lacks the magical quality some people associate with it.”
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Ambulance staff have described incidents, including one man who insisted that he could carry out a tracheotomy with a ballpoint pen after seeing it on Casualty.