Report Bad CPR In the Media
A comment from my Grey’s Anatomy rant deserves promotion to its own post:
I am one of the physicians who helps develop the CPR guidelines and teaching materials for the American Heart Association (AHA), and I am glad that folks are concerned about how CPR is depicted in the media — so am I. I know its “just a TV show”, but a lot of folks get important impressions from TV… we are trying to collect examples of bad CPR on TV to discuss at the AHA, if any of you can point us to specific TV shows/episodes, we’d be grateful (and you’d possibly be doing the world of CPR teaching a service!)
Email any tips or clips to resuscit@resuscitationatpenn.com
thanks!
I remember that Mission Impossible III (I’m not sure of the #; it’s the latest one) has some CPR in it near the end of the movie. The girl does some very quick chest compressions on Tom Cruise’s character, and I remember thinking that the movie seemed to reflect (my layman understanding of) the new CPR guidelines (more and quicker chest compressions over breaths).
Hope this helps.
Crackers
Hi! I remember watching Falcon Beach (can’t remember which episode it was…) and there was a scene of a lifeguard doing CPR on a little boy… she did it for maybe one minute and it was all wrong, and the boy died.. and the funny thing was that she was sitting there saying “what have I done wrong???”. it just LOOKED wrong, I don’t know… hope it helps, even if I can’t remember the exact episode… :)
Casino Royale (the recent Bond film with Daniel Craig) was a great movie, but near the end when he performed CPR on his drowned girlfriend, I lost all romantic interest in the guy. He clearly had not been taught how to perform true CPR. What a shame…
I agree with your assessment of really pathetic screen performances of CPR in general. However, to get the full effect most of the audience would up and leave after the first mouthful of vomit and the sound of cracking ribs.
Of the more than 100 or so times of doing one man CPR I always broke something on the subject and most of them puked.
I had CPR done to me last year and can vouch that with good compressions you do indeed break ribs (and sternum). So for the benefit of even a stand-in (unless you use resusci-Annie) I guess the less than accurate representation of CPR wiil do.
I’ve always heard (never seen up close) that “if you’re not breaking ribs, you’re not doing it right”.
Hard to duplicate on television. At least get the counts right I suppose.
If you’re doing CPR on someone, he/she is unconscious — so why not use a dummy on tv? When the person miraculously revives, they can use their camera tricks to put the real actor back in. This is TV, not live theater.
this season on Law and Order SVU, I have seen 2 emaples of poor CPR. On the last episode of CSI, new york, the person only did 2 compression and then did breaths again.
I agree… use the dummy with the actors head and COMPRESS. Heck, even add in the sound of breaking ribs and bring that up in the medical “drama”…almost as a public service announcement.
It took till the third episode of resuscitation before I heard the immortal words “She’s not dead until she is warm and dead.” No one I know would call off a code in a young acutely drowned person with a temp of 85 ever. Get them warm, then call em dead.
Oh yeah… as for bad CPR, Pulp Fiction comes to mind (right before the intracardiac epi), The Abyss movie had a weak one and I never saw a good one on “ER” despite them trying on seemingly every episode