The obvious question from this ep is: would a staged emergency room drill, taking place during real working hours and involving children pretending to be sick or injured, ever happen in real life? Just off the top of my head, I can think of a number of potential insurance nightmares the hospital would be subjecting itself to.
Without seeing the episode, no. Emergency drills can be sprung unexpectedly, but the “patient” is always a dummy that’s been placed by an educator. Dummy as in specially designed mannequin – the same kind you use to practice CPR on in first aid courses.
I thought that part was stupid, too. I’m sure there’s no “non-working” hours in an ER, but I’m sure any drills at all would take place at an off peak time, and maybe even with staff specially brought in for a training seminar. Surely not wasting the working staffs time.
It was good to see Sam screw up huge I think, and better yet Luka get involved in a cover up.
WTF is with Morris’ perversion over Carter’s girlfriend? That’s oogy. I can’t help but wonder if this is the beginning of the story line that will see Noah leave the show; then again I think that everytime I know somebody is leaving the cast.
There have been First Responder drills around here, with real people playing victims, but cartainly not children, and not in real ERs.
They’ve been at Light Rail stations and at the ballpark, for the firefighters and cops and EMTs to practice their skills.
They get volunteers from somewhere (I have no idea where) to pretend to be victims, and put makeup on them simulating various injuries. They did one downtown about a year ago depicting a chemical/biological attack.
They would never use a Girl Scout troop, though.
I also found the ER drill a little ridiculous. What, you’re supposed to tell the guy suffering chest pains, “Sorry, I have to go treat this Ranger girl with a fake head lac so they can mark our response time? Try not to have a heart attack until I come back.”
I’m waiting for Jen’s father to come in with signs of elder abuse…I think she’s at the end of her tether, and should certainly not be performing procedures on her father herself.
Emergency Response drills are usually to test the response of the first responders, paramedics, police etc. Treating a large number of people with many traumatic injuries in an inner-city hospital is called something else: Friday. They would never have a drill which would interfere with treating all of the real patients. I had to turn it off and switch to CBS.
HUGE improvement of an episode over the last few, though. Word to Ms. Woodward being back on board.
I didn’t watch last week. I turned it on this week a few minutes after it started and then I never really watched it and went to bed early.
Another ridiculous plot point that causes chaos in the ER? See that.
Another case of a doctor and nurse who are romantically involved having to cover something up? Yup, seen that.
Another main cast member getting ready to leave? Yup, seen that.
yawn What else in on Thursday nights at 10?
When I was in high school I was taking a health care science class, and for extra credit, we were asked if we wanted to be patients for something like this. It didn’t happen during a busy time at the hospital, though.
I found the emergency drill unbelievable too, if anything, just because Girl Scout type activities aren’t that popular any more at the ages those girls were. You would never find such a large troop.
The Sam/ Rape victim story line… They took her ventilater off to ask her questions like “Was he white?”, “Was he black?” all questions that could have been answered with the eye-blinking they were making snide comments about earlier in the show. What about a big Chicago detective not thinking of asking her to write answers to questions. He’s too stupid to solve any crimes no matter what.
She had two broken arms.
Oooops, I missed that part. Still, they didn’t have to kill her to ask her yes or no questions.
No, I totally agree SP2263. Risk her fragile life so she can mumble “yes” and “no” to such stupid questions? Hell, she was already nodding in the affirmative and negative when the detective first started to ask her questions.
:rolleyes:
Oh, and don’t forget that intense dialog.
Doc: “Here, look at your new baby”
Asian Woman: “What you talking about?”
Doc: “It’s your baby.”
Asian Woman: “What you talking about?”
GAH!
:rolleyes:
I don’t know why I even watch anymore, maybe just because I always have. It’s certainly not the high point of my TV week.
Odd. I thought the exact opposite. I’ve really liked the last few weeks, when they’ve focused on, you know, the ER and the character’s professional issues instead of continuing to play bedroom bingo as they have for the last few seasons. There for a while, it was almost like the old ER, where the cases were storylines in and of themselves instead of just being mirrors for the staffers’ personal crises.
I’ve seen a drill like that done before. When I was doing clinicals for paramedic, the ER I was at had a disaster drill similar to the about 5 minutes I saw of the show. The hospital was a Level II trauma center, but nothing on the scale of County General. They had extra staff on, I believe, but even so, they ignored the drill people until all the actual patients were taken care of.
Me too. Habit. I keep thinking I’m going to miss a show that was The Show That Everyone is Going to Talk About.
I need to wean myself off.
I don’t know much medicine, but I do know they could have hired a lip-reader and asked her to mouth the answers to non-Yes-or-No answers.
Hey, do I now qualify to practice Emergency medicine? Cool.
Didn’t someone here on the boards say in fact this is a lot more difficult? I remember someone explaining that for some reason, when people “mouth the words” rather than speak they tend to do something different and it makes it much more difficult to lip read.
I wonder if I can Dope search for “lip-read”. If it’s “lip read” I’m sunk because of the three letter word.