Malpractice at the movies
Dubious medical shenanigans in media
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- DirectorBrian YuznaStarsJeffrey CombsBruce AbbottClaude Earl JonesDoctors Herbert West and Dan Cain discover the secret to creating human life and proceed to create a perfect woman from dead tissue.A patient codes, and West and Abbott go from chest compressions to open heart surgery at bedside with startling speed. Don’t tell the American Heart Association.
- DirectorDominique Othenin-GirardStarsDonald PleasenceDanielle HarrisEllie CornellOne year after the events of Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988), the Shape returns to Haddonfield once again in an attempt to kill his now-mute niece.Dr Loomis is starting to crack up even in his very first scene in the original Halloween. He tells his nurse, as they're en route to the asylum, that he wants Myers so sedated before his trial that he will barely be able to stand. "Your compassion is overwhelming, doctor," she mutters.
Later, Loomis has followed the escaped madman to Haddonfield and convinces Sheriff Brackett to go with him to the old Myers house. They are startled by a rain gutter suddenly falling through the window, and Loomis pulls a gun. "You must think me a very strange doctor," he says apologetically. This bad case of nerves escalates into full-blown hysteria in subsequent installments, and by part 5 Loomis is terrorizing Myers' poor young niece, a nine year old girl, shaking her, screaming in her face, eventually using her as bait to catch the maniac.
But Loomis is not the only objectionable healthcare professional in the film; indeed, he doesn't seem to be Jamie's doctor, nor should he be, and the staff ought to be censured for letting this nutcase repeatedly berate and abuse their patient. Nor is this oversight the extent of their incompetence. There's the hysterical Nurse Patsey, who has a bit too much empathy, I guess, because when Jamie has a nightmare she comes running in screaming and crying, hardly a calming presence. Later Jamie starts having a seizure, so the medics get her on a stretcher, with Patsey running alongside clumsily jabbing the facemask of an ambu bag in her face, and they take her downstairs where the doctor tries to give her a tracheostomy. Loomis fortunately stops him, which is the one medically sound thing he does in the whole movie. - DirectorPaul FeigStarsSandra BullockMichael McDonaldMelissa McCarthyAn uptight FBI Special Agent is paired with a foul-mouthed Boston cop to take down a ruthless drug lord.A man at a restaurant starts choking, and our heroes decide that he needs an emergency tracheostomy. Neither has any medical training, so maybe this scene is an outlier on the list: the point of the scene is that they don't know what they're doing.
- DirectorBrian YuznaStarsCorbin BernsenLinda HoffmanMichael StadvecAn extremely successful dentist goes off the deep end after he catches his wife cheating on him.It would take all day to recount all the instances where Corbin Bernsen departs from best practice here. And I doubt that he’s cleaned up his act in the sequel!
- DirectorNorman ApsteinStarsClint HowardJustin IsfeldAnndi McAfeePoor Gregory. After being released from the Wishing Well Sanatorium, all he wants to do is make the children happy. So Gregory reopens the old ice cream factory, and all the unappreciative brats are reprocessed into the flavor of the day.At Wishing Well Sanatorium, Gregory is strapped to a table, injected in the cranium with big syringes full of green goo, and exhorted to make every day a happy day by a doctor in clown makeup. Then he is released back into the community, which is a worse error by far.
Suspicious also that his former caregiver Nurse Wharton is now his landlord. Now, perhaps this arrangement is entirely above board, besides all the murdering, but it seems potentially exploitive. - DirectorWilliam LustigStarsRobert DaviRobert Z'DarCaitlin DulanyA priest practicing the Voodoo arts resurrects Matt Cordell, who takes his badge and comes back from the dead to do his bidding.Sure, a big zombie cop is prowling around the hospital killing doctors and EMTs, but that doesn’t excuse the multiple HIPAA violations, slapdash care and poor bedside manner on display here. A brain dead patient’s assisted airway is unsecured, and looks to be improperly inserted, to put it mildly. Also, her monitor shows flatlines with the word “asystole”, and no one seems to be in a hurry to check if she’s actually dead, and not just brain dead.
Come to think of it, Matt Cordell probably had some training in first aid, so he should know better than to use the defibrillator on a person’s head. We might expect these shenanigans from someone like Victor Crowley, but not an officer of the law. And he probably wasn’t trained to use the x-ray machine, because look what happens when he does. That’s outside your scope of practice, Maniac Cop! - DirectorSam FirstenbergStarsLucinda DickeyAdolfo QuinonesMichael ChambersA developer tries to bulldoze a community recreation center. The local breakdancers try to stop it.So, Turbo and Ozone have resorted to guerrilla tactics to sabotage the construction crews that are getting ready to bulldoze their beloved community center. To this end, Turbo steals the foreman’s lunch box and runs off, with the crew in hot pursuit; unfortunately he quickly takes a tumble down a steep flight of stairs and ends up in buck’s traction at the hospital.
Naturally, Turbo’s friends come to raise his flagging spirits. Out comes the boom box, and they’re all boogieing away. Now, someone ought to put a stop to this nonsense straight away. Patients in the hospital need rest, peace and quiet, not breakdancing. We quickly see the deleterious effects of breakdance on the orderly functioning of the hospital in the scenes that follow.
Turbo’s friends seize his hospital bed and wheel it out into the hall. Now, this is a fire code violation. Gotta have those hallways clear and uncluttered. As they pop and lock, boogie and sway, their siren song takes hold of a group of disabled men, who suddenly leap from their wheelchairs, cast aside their crutches, and vault over their walkers with no regard for activity restrictions. Plainly, a physical therapist should be on hand to supervise any of these exercises, and he or she would likely urge caution and restraint. Into the unit bursts a quarter of stern looking nurses, but these little vixens are wearing extremely short skirts (doesn’t this hospital have a dress code?) and instead of putting a stop to this they start doing a choreographed stripper dance at the nurse’s station, using the phones as props. Those phones are for serious hospital business only, people!
It only gets worse. In the operating suite next door, a patient flatlines. Immediately the surgeon washes his hands of this situation: “It’s too late. We lost him.” This after exactly no resuscitative measures are attempted. But the stripper nurses are outside jiving, and the surgical staff, seeing their wicked dance, join hands to pop and lock, then boogie out the door. Miraculously, the patients heart resumes beating, and he sits up happily. He’ll be less happy when he discovers that they haven’t closed the incision, nor removed all the surgical sponges.
Finally, Turbo’s friends race down the hallway with his bed and slam it into a laundry cart, covering him with huge bags of doubtlessly putrid hospital linens. You do not want to play in these linens, kids, believe me. We can only hope that Medicare or the Joint Commision was there to take note of all these irregularities. - DirectorMichael SchultzStarsDarren RobinsonDamon WimbleyMark MoralesThree bumbling orderlies are hired to take care of an old rich man. Humorous mayhem follows.Haven’t seen this one yet, but something tells me that these orderlies are breaking at least a few of the rules.
- DirectorMichael SchultzStarsRichard BenjaminJames CocoScatman CrothersTo inherit a fortune, various addressees of a will must compete in a wild scavenger hunt to collect selected items, but cannot be simply bought.Vincent Price’s live in nurse should be preventing him from engaging in stressful activity, but instead we meet the two of them in the throes of a heated arcade game session. Alas, his heart cannot take it.
- DirectorMilos FormanStarsJack NicholsonLouise FletcherMichael BerrymanIn the Fall of 1963, a Korean War veteran and criminal pleads insanity and is admitted to a mental institution, where he rallies up the scared patients against the tyrannical nurse.Changing gears here. Mildred Ratched’s villainy is not the sort that wallops you over the head. She is steely and calm. In her place of work, she has to be.
We get a glimpse of something monstrous however in group therapy, where Ratched singles out young Billy for especially attention. She insists on talking about his suicide attempt, when he is clearly uncomfortable. He talks about a girlfriend, and she shames him, asking if his mother knew about this woman. This belittling and badgering is hardly therapeutic; Billy’s stutter and anxiety notably increase during her interrogation.
Hard to prove Ratched’s malicious intent from all this. Fortunately, Millie is in clear violation of HIPAA when she tells Billy that she will tell his momma about his misbehavior; after all, they’re old friends. This in spite of Billy’s objections, and he is an adult and admitted to the hospital on his own cognizance. Someone tell the BON. We got this bitch. - DirectorMichael LaughlinStarsMichael MurphyLouise FletcherDan ShorA scientist is experimenting with teenagers and turning them into murderers.Louise Fletcher again. But she’s not the offender here.
Yep, it’s another HIPAA violation. Sure, the psychology department is experimenting with mind control, and compelling students enrolled in their cognitive therapy case studies to kill, big whoop. We all know that’s very naughty. But their judgy little secretary is too loose with the confidential patient information, and that simply cannot stand. A patient drops by to leave the staff some baked goods, and as she leaves the secretary tells another patient “She used to weigh over 300 pounds. A real balloon if you ask me.” Nobody asked you, Judge Reinhold, and if they had, you oughtn’t go around blabbing such things, ya little gossip. - DirectorDavid CronenbergStarsMarilyn ChambersFrank MooreTerry SchonblumA young woman develops a taste for human blood after experimental plastic surgery, and her victims turn into blood-thirsty zombies, leading into a city-wide epidemic.Poor Dr Keloid ought to have worn gloves before poking at his patient’s skin graft, where she has sprouted a brand new orifice. Wouldn’t have done him much good, because she quickly hugs him tight and bites him with her armpit. Still, buddy, you don’t want to introduce any germs into that wound, or catch anything that might be growing in it.
Anyway, Dr Keloid gets to foaming at the mouth, sweating and shaking, and he’s got a surgery first thing in the morning. Shoulda just called in sick, rescheduled. And his partner ought to have ignored his protests and taken over the operation long before he grabs the scissors and lops off her finger. Bet she won’t make that mistake twice.
Lots of irregularities here at the Keloid Clinic. Okay, maybe they needed to do emergency surgery there to save Ms Chambers’ life, but once stabilized she should have been transferred. But one month later she’s still in the clinic, comatose. This is simply not the right care setting for such a patient. Gotta say, good on our Canadian friends for taking such good care of this itinerant stranger. No haggling about cost or insurance: the patient comes first. Isn’t socialized medicine great? Well, unless your doctor uses you for an experimental surgery that turns you into a rabies-spreading armpit vampire (results presumably not typical). - DirectorRyan SpindellStarsTristan ByonEden CampbellHannah R. LoydAn eccentric mortician recounts several macabre and phantasmagorical tales that he's encountered in his distinguished career.Dr Kubler isn’t supposed to seem like a model of propriety, but one can appreciate the impulse that moves him help a husband experiencing a bad case of caregiver role strain. Seems the man’s young wife has fallen into a near-vegetative state, requiring constant care, so he quit his job to tend to her full time. So Dr Kubler prescribes a powerful opioid, and takes pains to emphasize in his instructions that two capsules would be a fatal dose.
Now, maybe this route was explored before, but there has got to be a better way. Perhaps a nice nursing home, or a referral to palliative care. Sure, could be expensive, and he’s got no job now, so maybe there’s a local charity? Does the young lady have Medicare? Surely there are options besides going full Kevorkian. Well, half-ass Kevorkian. - DirectorStewart RaffillStarsDenise RichardsTheo ForsettPaul WalkerAn evil scientist implants the brain of murdered high-school student Michael into a Tyrannosaurus. He escapes, wreaks vengeance on his high-school tormentors, and reunites with his sweetheart Tammy.Ok, obviously Dr Wachenstein is not on the up and up. This man is obsessed with giving a animatronic t-rex life, so much so that he wants to implant it with a living brain. He’s bonkers, and everything he does in the picture is clearly quite illegal. He kidnaps Michael after (badly) faking his death and murders him for a dumb experiment. All that goes a bit beyond malpractice.
I’m concerned about the doctor who consults this quack. We essentially accept that Wachenstein is a respected neurologist because the plot requires it, and also that he is a crazypants whackadoo doing mad science in a warehouse with a handful of giggling henchmen. (Is being a renowned neurosurgeon not enough by itself to pay the bills? You gotta have a sideline in black market experimentation? I guess the lure is the wealth and immortality.) It could help to see him in respectable physician mode, at least for a scene or two, and pulling it off. But the charade is just far too obvious. This seems like a potentially unnecessary consult, too: there is no evident brain trauma, and there must be healthy EEG activity because Michael spontaneously regains consciousness as he’s being spirited away, only to be knocked out again by a punch from Wachenstein’s Amazonian assistant.
Indeed, the whole hospital seems vaguely disreputable. There’s the secretary who ignores a bleeding man who collapses at the front desk, telling him to wait his turn while directing Tammy to her lover’s ICU bed. And is it the same hospital where Tammy and Byron later break into the morgue, shopping for a new body for Michael? The extremely lax security suggests that it just might be. - DirectorGary FlederStarsMichael DouglasSean BeanBrittany MurphyWhen the daughter of a psychiatrist is kidnapped, he's horrified to discover that the abductors' demand is that he break through to a post traumatic stress disorder suffering young woman who knows a secret...Not only does Dr Nathan Conrad discuss confidential patient information with his daughter’s kidnapper, but he attacks security staff, using a controlled substance as a weapon (hope he checked that guy’s allergies before injecting a sedative into his arm, but then again that would be another HIPAA violation). He then absconds with said patient, though she is a danger to herself and others. And sure, extreme circumstances call for extreme measures, but if Klavan and company weren’t grade-A hacks, they might have conveyed a certain hesitation in the character, an inner conflict between his desperation to save his kid and his duties to his patient. We never see that conflict, and we never get much a sense that he cares about helping the patient overcome her past trauma. She’s a plot device, and he’s a static character.
- DirectorLewis TeagueStarsRobert ForsterRobin RikerMichael V. GazzoA pet baby alligator is flushed down a toilet and survives in the city sewers. Twelve years later, it grows to an enormous size thanks to a diet of discarded laboratory dogs injected with growth hormones. Now, humans have entered the menu.Major HIPAA violation as the nurse who treated Robert Forster’s detective character blabs to a snooping tabloid journalist about his hospital stay. HIPAAcrit!
- 1989–199629mNot Rated7.0 (993)TV EpisodeDirectorElliot SilversteinStarsMalcolm McDowellSandra DickinsonGeorge WendtA good natured vampire takes a more novel approach to satisfying his blood lust with his chosen undercover employment.Vampire Donald Longtooth hates killing, so he finds work as a night watchman at a blood bank so that he can feed without doing anyone harm. But this skimming off the top does not go unnoticed, and his boss Mr Crosswhite promises mass layoffs if the blood bank can’t shore up its supplies. So Donald takes to the streets at night, murdering criminals and harvesting their blood in a water cooler bottle with a keg tap.
Let’s consider all the problems with this arrangement here. Ah, where to begin? Donald is not a trained phlebotomist, and he is not using the appropriate equipment. I very much doubt that he is cleaning his jerryrigged blood collection apparatus between victims; in fact, he just seems to fill it up with blood from several victims at a time. There’s no way to do a cross match with that blood now! Hell, anyone who gets that transfusion is guaranteed to have a hemolytic reaction, never mind the high likelihood of bloodborne pathogens, or the fact that that water cooler bottle isn’t temperature controlled.
This may just be the most concerning of the issues on the list.
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Concerns also in season 4’s “This’ll Kill Ya”, where venal pharma rep Dylan McDermott keeps his personal insulin vial in a refrigerator meant for experimental drugs. Gee, what could go wrong? - DirectorFrank HenenlotterStarsJames LorinzJoanne RitchiePatty MullenA medical student sets out to recreate his decapitated fiancée by building her a new body made of Manhattan street prostitutes.‘Nuff said.
- DirectorManny CotoStarsLarry DrakeHolly Marie CombsCliff De YoungA madman who believes he's a doctor comes to the town where his crazy father was killed, and soon begins murdering people and becoming infatuated with a teenage girl who has a heart condition.Cut Dr Giggles some slack: he’s not actually a doctor, so no wonder his methods are so unorthodox. And sure, practicing medicine without license, board certification or formal schooling is a no-no, but he’s got a bad case of schizophrenia: is it still fraud if he sincerely thinks that he’s a doctor? Well, probably.
- DirectorJosé Ramón LarrazStarsBarton FaulksChristina Marie LanePage MoselyAn axe murderer terrorizes a small Northern California mountain community, while two young computer-obsessed adults attempt to solve the killings.Yet another HIPPA violation. Detailed medical records from a psychiatric hospital should not be accessible to any dork with a PC, but here we are.
- DirectorRoger SpottiswoodeStarsBen JohnsonJamie Lee CurtisHart BochnerThree years after a prank went terribly awry, the six college students responsible are targeted by a masked killer at a New Year's Eve party aboard a moving train.Idiot premed frat boy Doc picks up an injured, unresponsive chum, stabbed in the middle of a crowded room, and runs with him wailing for help. He runs into hapless conductor Ben Johnson and Laurie Strode… er, Jamie Lee Curtis, and they have him set the victim down, “Give him some air,” whatever, it’s too late for all that, and Doc is screaming “I’m a doctor!” No dipshit, you’re premed, and you ought to know the freakin difference.
Verdict: guilty of falsely identifying himself as a doctor. - DirectorBrandon CampStarsGabriel BatemanDarby CampKiele SanchezTwo school kids strike up a friendship with an orphaned puppy named Benji. When danger befalls them and they end up kidnapped by robbers who are in over their heads, Benji and his scruffy sidekick come to the rescue.I know, I know: this is supposed to be a list of dubious medical practice. But when you’re arresting some scumbag and instead of reading him his Miranda rights you say “You have the right to… pretty much nothing,” any idiot lawyer is going to be able to get the perp off on that technicality. Dammit, man, you’re supposed to making these streets safer.
So maybe I should do a new list, for legal shenanigans. But ain’t nobody got time for that. - CreatorJason RothenbergStarsEliza TaylorBob MorleyMarie AvgeropoulosSet 97 years after a nuclear war destroyed civilization, when a spaceship housing humanity's lone survivors sends 100 juvenile delinquents back to Earth, hoping to repopulate the planet.Now, I’ll be goddamned if there won’t be further cause to carp here in the future, but Clarke’s lifesaving skills in S1E11 do not impress. So, it is deduced that Trish the warrior princess has a hematoma inhibiting lung expansion, and a jury-rigged chest tube is placed. Okay. Well, before you know it Trishy is septic, and antibiotics and antipyretics are hard to come by post apocalypse. So Clarke decides she’s gonna transfuse, using an unmatched donor and a rusty old syringe. But before they can get that going ol’ Trish stops breathing, and doesn’t get the courtesy of a pulse check or a shake, let alone rescue breaths or (if indicated) chest compressions. It’s like, c’mon girl, don’t you want to save your boyfriend?