OK, I watch too many medical documentaries/reality shows. Now that that’s out of the way. . .
On one such doc that I recently saw, there was a situation in which two sisters were involved in a really bad car accident. One sister was seriously banged up; the other, critically.
The family shows up and they the attending physician gives them the low down on the lesser injured sister. The family [as I inferred] got it really quickly that that sister was banged up, but the other one was much worse. That was the one they kept asking questions about.
ER doc tries to divert the conversation away a couple of times saying “She didn’t wan’t to jump back and forth between the two patients,” until she finally relented and told them that they were still running tests, but she was indeed much worse.
To me, she appeared to be stonewalling. I don’t think that dispensing that info [“She’s been hurt really bad, but we’re still running tests, and we don’t know the extent of the injuries] from the get-go would have been a breach of protocol, but I’m not in the industry, so I ask. . .
Is that sort of situation normal in a case like this?
(And just in case there’s any question, this was on a medical doc–not in “real life,” but I’m assuming that what was filmed was on the up and up, and not staged.)
If was filmed was on the up and up, I’d attribute it to doctors not wanting to have a conversation about a patient before the test results are back.
Also, was the doctor for the less-damaged sister the same doctor as the one who was caring for the more-damaged sister? It could be she didn’t want to discuss another doctor’s case.
Was this actually filmed at the time or was it a re-enactment? If the former it could be the doctor wanted some test results first so she would have concrete info to base the conversation. Or maybe she wanted to try and get health info from the family before giving them the bad news. Or maybe she’s just not good at those kinds of conversations and was trying to avoid it as long as possible. If this was a re-enactment is could just be for dramatic tension.
Is it possible that she didn’t want to talk about the critically-injured sister where the less-injured one could hear? I can understand if the knowledge of how bad-off her sister is could have a negative impact on her . . . especially if the accident had been in any way her fault.
This appeared to be filmed real-time. However, even when things are filmed in “real time,” in programs like this, I know that sometimes they reshoot scenes after the fact.
It was the same doctor for both patients. There was no dramatic tension for the viewer. We already knew that one sis was in bad shape and the other one might not make it.
Again, in my opinion, the family “got it” that one was in bad shape (but probably would pull thru), and the other one’s situation was dicey at best. She was the one that the doctor at least twice said that she only wanted to talk about the first sis. My point is just that it would seem to me–as an outsider–that it would have been easy to say, “She’s in pretty bad shape, but we don’t have all the results back, so we can’t tell you the prognosis.”
(And, not that anyone likely cares, but here is the obit [search for Gomes] for the really banged up sister. This is actually some years after the accident, so she did pull thru, but they said that she would probably have permanent brain damage. The obit also mentions the sister as a survivor. The accident was in 1997-1998 (Oahu, I think) in which a tractor trailer jackknifed, causing several accidents. The attending ER physician in these cases.