Worst Aid: Difference between revisions
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* Moving injured people without stabilizing their head first.
* Removing impaling foreign objects from wounds. Generally they've smashed all the bits they're going to smash, and are now acting as a plug on the wound - and an infection can be fought off with antibiotics at the hospital. Pull the plug, and you may be dead in minutes. Barbed weapons might tear more flesh and even if they don't, you're unlikely to be able to pull it out at the exact angle it went in.
* Depicting mouth-to-mouth as romantic. Using CPR on that pale, dying individual in your arms has about a 2% chance of revival on its own (and doesn't guarantee that they'll survive what caused that cardiac arrest in the first place). In recent times, official standards have dictated that mouth-to-mouth isn't even recommended if a victim has no pulse.<ref>
* In addition, depicting CPR as able to revive somebody alone. CPR is NOT a life''saving'' technique, but rather a life-''prolonging'' technique designed to keep someone in some sort of recoverable state while actual help arrives. If they revive on CPR alone, then you're just lucky.
* Depicting professionals doing mouth-to-mouth in modern times. EMTs and hospital staff will always use a [[wikipedia:Bag valve mask|bag valve mask]], both for hygiene (having a patient throw up in your mouth used to be a rite of passage for paramedics) and because it delivers more oxygen. And typically they will run a tube down their throat first.
* Having a male rescuer get [[
* Likewise, mouth-to-mouth on a drowning victim only really works if you get most of the water out first.
* Disregarding the security of an accident scene or even personal safety, in violation of the most important rule: Avoid increasing the number of casualties. Rushing onto the freeway isn't any more safe because there's an upended car on it. This one's popular in real life – paramedics get called out at least weekly in some areas for accidents caused by people running onto the freeway to help.
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'''Watson:''' God lord, Holmes, how on Earth could you tell that?
'''Sherlock:''' I was watching you from the doorway, and frankly I couldn't believe my eyes. }}
* ''[[The Ruins]]''... oh, good lord, ''The Ruins'': first, they accidentally drop a guy a couple of stories, discover that he can't move or even feel his legs,
** All of this on the advice of a ''pre-med'' student. ''Two'' of them were pre-med students, actually.
** The characters in question (except the [[Almost-Dead Guy]]) were all [[Too Dumb to Live]] anyway, so all this idiocy may be intentional.
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== Literature ==
* ''[[The Last Book in the Universe]]'' is one of many works in which a character undergoing a seizure gets a stick stuck in his mouth to prevent him from biting his tongue. In this case, it doesn't quite work as
* ''[[Anne of Green Gables]]'': Administering ipecac (which is supposed to be for inducing vomiting) to a croup patient. [[Captain Obvious|Big no-no]] now, but was the standard treatment protocol in the early 20th century.
* ''[[Twilight (novel)|Twilight]]'', hooo boy. After Bella is attacked by James, she's immediately dosed up on morphine, one of the most potent and dangerous painkillers, because apparently Carlisle is able to carry the stuff around with him. As Edward goes to carry her out of the ballet studio, he tells her that it's fine for her to go to sleep, even though she lost a lot of blood and had her head violently smashed around to the point where she had cracks in her skull. Furthermore, since Edward has boasted about how he has two medical degrees, he ought to, you know, know about the dangers of comas. Then there's the bit at the hospital, where Bella's heart ''literally stops'' when she and Edward kiss and the nurses ''don't notice at all''. Even though she just had transfusions and was smashed to bits and was hooked up to a heart monitor. Also, apparently Edward is the one who can tell the nurses when Bella needs to be medicated. Right.
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* ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'':
** In the episode "Search and Rescue", Sheppard is impaled in the side by a piece of metal. Ronon yanks it out and bandages the wound. This is wrong in so many ways.
** Ronon has also pulled an arrow out of his own leg once and popped his dislocated shoulder back into place. (It is possible to fix a dislocated shoulder, but it is incredibly, brutally
** In an earlier episode, McKay gets slashed in the arm when the Genii decide to torture him a bit, and shows up the next day with a bandage... around his ''sleeve''.
** In the episode "Brain Storm," a victim of hypothermia is rescued and wrapped in a blanket, but allowed to walk around in the same cold, damp clothes she had previously been wearing. This is presumptively over half an hour after she was rescued. At the very least, people should have been concerned about her catching pneumonia.
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* Captain Archer bandages Shran's leg when he gets a stalagmite stuck through it in the ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]'' episode "The Aenar", though Shran lifted his leg off the stalagmite himself.
* How many times have we seen people in films and TV treating epileptic seizures by putting things in the victims' mouths "to prevent them biting their tongues"? Commenting on this on a British radio programme, one epileptic remarked that "a bitten tongue is a lot better than a broken jaw". This has some basis in reality, since rolled leather was sometimes used to keep people being flogged from biting their tongues, and in real-life seizure cases it works perfectly fine without damaging the jaws, but most people on TV just grab anything on hand.
** Also, the frequency with which they grab some sort of drug to stop the
* The British music movie ''24 Hour Party People'' shows the ultimate in ''not'' helping an epileptic
* [[Played for Laughs]] in ''[[My Name Is Earl]]'': When Earl gets shivved in prison, they take it out and put on a Band-Aid. "Apparently, prison health care ''sucks''."
* ''[[Supernatural (TV series)|Supernatural]]'' had Sam scooping Dean up and cradling him after he'd been hit with enormous force by a car ([[Unexplained Recovery|he got better]]), with blithe disregard for his spinal column.
** ''[[Supernatural]]'' varies widely on this one: one the one hand, the ECG is actually showing a shockable rhythm when a defibrillator is used (unlike the vast majority of TV shows, who are lucky enough to have [[Magical Defibrillator
* In an episode of ''[[Psych]]'', Shawn's captor attempts to treat his bullet wound by duct taping a chamois to the outside of his shirt. Even worse is the fact that he never even bothers to cover the gaping hole that is the exit wound. Also, his captor refers to it as "a flesh wound".
* In an episode of ''[[Due South]]'', a man is hit by a car and Fraser carries him to the hospital, hoisted over his shoulders. Apparently no one thought to call an ambulance.
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* ''[[Law and Order SVU]]'' episode Bombshell has the wonderful scene where "a bystander yanked the knife out" and his girlfriend "tried sticking it back in" when it started spurting blood all over.
* [[Doctor Who|Martha]] saves The Doctor's life in her introductory episode . . . with ''CPR''. When the problem was ''blood loss''. And she's supposed to be a medical student.
** Much, MUCH worse was the entire CPR scene in [[Doctor Who (TV)/Recap/S32 E3 The Curse of the Black Spot|The Curse of The Black Spot]] where the [[Narm]]-driven reason for choosing Amy as CPR operator was suspect, her execution was cringe-worthy, she gave up after less than 2 minutes (which proved the aforementioned suspicions about her to be valid) and there was a potential second operator (the Doctor) just standing around doing nothing. This troper and every other medically trained professional they've discussed it with (doctors, nurses, EMTs, you name it) absolutely deplores this case of
* Averted in ''[[Rescue 911]]'' - many episodes show people who realize someone has a neck injury and say, "Uh oh - better not move them".
* This is how [[Arrested Development (TV series)|Tobias Funke]] lost his medical license (a ''psychotherapy'' license!), by giving CPR to a man that needed none and breaking several ribs. Then he demonstrated his life-saving intent in court and ''broke more ribs.''
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* In ''[[World of Warcraft]]'' [[Hollywood Healing|bandages heal everything]], be it slashes, blunt trauma or damage done by any sort of magic. However, if you try to heal yourself you have to wait until damage over time effects, such as, for example, ''bleeding'', stop on their own because they interrupt the process.
** Bandages can even heal poison or mental damage done by shadow magic. Think about that for a minute.
* ''Team Fortress''
* The sequel, ''[[Team Fortress 2]],'' gets in on the [[Comedic Sociopathy]] angle by giving players access to a new weapon, the Crusader's Crossbow. The Medic can fire at enemies to harm them, or he can fire it ''at his allies'' to increase their health.
** Actually, the Doktor period. His method of preforming open-heart surgery is to have the patient hold their chest cavity open while he pushes the organ (which he had previously extracted) up through the bottom of their ribcage before pointing his "side-effect of healing" weapon at them. Also: "Don't worry, ribs grow back! [whispers] No they don't." All of this is done without gloves. Gloves he later puts on to kill people with.
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* In ''[[Rainbow Six]]: Vegas'' and ''[[Rainbow Six]]: Vegas 2'' you heal your injured teammates by jamming a needle into them. Anywhere on their body. Your ally could have been filled with lead and all that's required to get them back in the fight is a needle stab to the face, groin, or foot coupled with a quick, motivational "You're good to go." To top it off, the needle is removed in a manner that's very likely to snap the end off.
* ''[[Modern Warfare]]'' makes the curious mistake of having the ''computer-generated NPCs'' do CPR wrong. The usual justification for the sort of "bent elbows" CPR (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZguxm-Sqtc#t=7m20s ) common in media mentioned in the opening of this article doesn't really apply. In this case it seems to be a case of art imitating art, even after the reason has disappeared. Another theory is that in the age of motion capture work being used to give the most natural realistic looking movements in games, the team used to play the NPCs couldn't do straight arms without hurting the actor playing the injured person, so it's been grandfathered in even though actual actors are no longer used.
* Averted in the latest version of ''[[America's Army]]''. You are given an "Individual First Aid Kit" but are made to sit through a lesson which teaches you what treatment to use for each symptom before you're allowed to use it. All are correct battlefield first aid techniques taught by the Army to average soldiers, although the lesson is condensed. However, during a firefight, when a team member goes down, it's often fairly hard to pay attention too long to the symptoms with bullets whizzing
* ''[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EuIgzFW7B2I Robinson's Requiem]''.
* ''[[Max Payne (series)|Max Payne]]'' recovers health through the use of painkiller pills. Apparently whatever the hell is ''in'' those pills can heal bullet wounds.
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* ''[[Getaway]]'' is a particularly fine example. You've been shot multiple times? No problem! Just lean on this wall for a bit. It even launders clothes.
* In ''[[Dragon Age]]: Origins'', you heal with poultices. As in, the stuff you rub on the wound (though it's likely just being used as an alternate word for "potion"). The animation accompanying use of a poultice is drinking it.
* In ''Return to Mysterious Island 2: Mina's Fate'', Mina's leg wound must be treated with raw herbs and a puddle-dipped rag, after sealing it using ''decapitated ant heads'' as impromptu sutures, which despite how bizarre it sounds, is actually a real method.<ref>The [http://dareiread.blogspot.com/2008/02/ant-head-sutures.html Masai people in Africa] used this for doctors and patients in India. You make the living ant bite the two sides of the wound together and rip its body off, [http://www.inriodulce.com/images/ArmyAntSutures.jpg leaving the pincers still in you], and it tends to actually work</ref>
* In the multiplayer for ''[[Return to Castle Wolfenstein]]'', the Medic's only answer for reviving downed teammates who have been shot, stabbed, burned, or even ''blown up'' is to stab them with a syringe full of mystery chemicals. Plus, in the case of heavily wounded teammates, some medics won't even bother going through the effort of healing them and will kill the wounded teammate so he can revive him to full health instead.
** Likewise, ''[[Battlefield (series)|Battlefield 2]]'' does the exact same thing except with defibrillators instead of syringes.
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'''Grif:''' ''(sigh)'' You're welcome, sir.<br />
'''Sarge:''' I mean, it's also damn inconsistent! What would you do if they stabbed me in the toe? Rub my neck with aloe vera? }}
** It doesn't help very much when they get an actual
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