Medical Bloopers in Philippine Drama

Watching Philippine drama’s its common to see scenes that have conflicts between rich and poor, romances between 2 characters, revenge of villains and dramatic endings. Its just recently that I have noticed medical scenes in a drama more closely because of the recent primetime offering of ABS-CBN called Habang May Buhay starring Judy Ann Santos. The story revolves around Judy Ann being a nurse and her quest to help her mother recover from a tragic love story that lead her to develop psychotic behavior. However this article is not intended to make a review about the soap opera but to examine some medical bloopers around Philippine television past or present.

When I was not still a nurse, I used to believe that the things they do in a medical related scenes are the actual scenes you can see in a hospital. A lot of cases are shown in an emergency or intensive care unit setting. However, when I started to work especially in a toxic area, the medical ward and now at the Emergency room, now I realized that most scenarious are a bit funny and unrealistic. Lets site some examples below:

1. A patient was defibrillated but she has still clothes on it. 

2. A patient on cardiac arrest was not intubated, still they placed O2 cannula. (Dahil May Isang Ikaw)

3. I wonder why the nurse always carry patients chart.

4. A patient was intubated and yet she can talk (Tayong Dalawa, Marimar)

5. A patient was intubated but was still with O2 cannula. (Babaeng Hinugot sa Aking Tadyang)

6. A woman had delivery, when the baby came out, there was no vernix and was already cord dressed. 

7. A doctor pronounced the patient dead only with a stetoscope or sometimes a flat line on the cardiac monitor only. 

8. Doing chest compressions on the stomach (Habang May Buhay)

9. A patient was pronounced dead but continued to do CPR (Habang May Buhay)

10. A patient was operated (EX-LAP) but was only given O2 cannula. (Dahil May Isang Ikaw)

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