# Practicing medicine vs. advanced first aid **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 19, 2014, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practicing-medicine-vs-advanced-first-aid/705046 "2014-11-19T04:29:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![ZenBeam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/3ab097/32.png) [@ZenBeam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZenBeam)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2014, 1:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practicing-medicine-vs-advanced-first-aid/705046/21 "2014-11-21T13:06:22Z")
Even on M.A.S.H., Radar was performing the tracheotomy under the advice and direction of an actual doctor. I would think that would give you lot of legal protection. Also > [@kayaker](#): > > **Idiot** friend went to his PCP to have the stitches removed the following week. Everything healed perfectly. In conversation my buddy mentioned that his friend had sutured him in the woods. The doctor was all pissy and wanted my name, **which my friend refused to provide**. The doctor apparently wanted to “report” me. I’d say the second bold part contradicts the first bold part. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2014, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practicing-medicine-vs-advanced-first-aid/705046/22 "2014-11-21T14:04:17Z")
> [@ZenBeam](#): > > Also > I’d say the second bold part contradicts the first bold part. 🙂 Yeah, it was the part about even mentioning how the wound got closed. In addition, I’ve never known anyone who bothered to go to the doctor for stitch snipping. ---
**Author:** ![Zsofia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/7bcc69/32.png) [@Zsofia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zsofia)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2014, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practicing-medicine-vs-advanced-first-aid/705046/23 "2014-11-21T14:50:09Z")
Well, I mean, if I were him I’d want somebody with letters behind his name to take a look at my backcountry axe wound sutured by the least drunk guy on the team. Even if it looked okay, I mean, just in case. ---
**Author:** ![sbunny8](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c77e96/32.png) [@sbunny8](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sbunny8)\ **Post date:** [November 21, 2014, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practicing-medicine-vs-advanced-first-aid/705046/24 "2014-11-21T17:33:39Z")
IANAL, but In Oregon, I was told that you can’t be charged with Practicing Medicine Without A License if you didn’t collect any money. Anything you do for free, out of the kindness of your heart, is NOT considered “practicing medicine”. For example, if you are a Registered Nurse and you see someone bleeding and you say “Hey dude, you should go to a doctor” and he says “I can’t afford a doctor” then you can say “Well I’m not a doctor but I’ll stitch you up for free”. You haven’t committed a crime in Oregon. BUT if you do a terrible job at it and the dude dies, I’m not sure if you might end up on the wrong end of a civil suit from the family. ---
**Author:** ![Phileaux](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Phileaux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Phileaux)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2016, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practicing-medicine-vs-advanced-first-aid/705046/25 "2016-06-15T03:33:06Z")
A bit late, but since I just saw this episode… One thing that hasn’t come up is that prosecuting a crime is _always_ at the discretion of the commonwealth attorney. The cop’s attitude of “she broke the law” is ridiculous. I’d say a police officer who acts like he “has” to charge a crime has a bone to pick. It might be nonoptional if one of the victims wants to press charges for battery, but as they said - the victims and their families appealed to the court to leave her alone. In this situation I have zero doubt that the commonwealth’s attorney would just drop the charges - the “you just have to do community service” was a serious slap in the face. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2016, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practicing-medicine-vs-advanced-first-aid/705046/26 "2016-06-15T05:33:38Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Whatever the law may be, I find it hard to imagine that a jury would convict if the action could be demonstrated to have saved the person’s life, or even (if they were not going to die) substantially improved their medical outcome in some way. Good chance, though, a judge will rule that irrelevant and not allow the jury to hear of it. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2016, 11:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practicing-medicine-vs-advanced-first-aid/705046/27 "2016-06-15T11:04:16Z")
I suspect that informed consent is also part of the picture. Using **kayaker** ’s example, his friend knew that he wasn’t a doctor, and that he did not consider himself trained to put in stitches (because **kayaker** explicitly told him that), but the friend agreed to it anyway. ---
**Author:** ![bump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7c8e57/32.png) [@bump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bump)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2016, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practicing-medicine-vs-advanced-first-aid/705046/28 "2016-06-15T15:17:08Z")
> [@Johnny\_L.A](#): > > So how far can an unlicensed person go to save a life without being prosecuted? It seemed to me like the worst sort of absurd legalistic BS that the writers could come up with to put that particular person in a predicament. I would have imagined the Good Samaritan laws would have applied in that case. But even before that point, I’m pretty sure that a former corpsman (or other military medical first-responder) might get a lot of leeway from law enforcement people if they did what they did on the NCIS episode. Technically, it might be practicing medicine without a license, but they’re clearly trained and experienced with that sort of thing, and obviously saved that person’s life. It seems like a huge stretch to me to think that a cop on scene or paramedics would have done a thing. At worst, they’d have taken the people to the hospital, and some do-gooder doctor might have brought it up, then they’d have found out the true situation and said “Oh… Navy Corpsman from Afghanistan. That’s different.” ---
**Author:** ![JacobSwan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@JacobSwan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JacobSwan)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2016, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practicing-medicine-vs-advanced-first-aid/705046/29 "2016-06-15T15:44:01Z")
> [@kayaker](#): > > Yeah, it was the part about even mentioning how the wound got closed. In addition, I’ve never known anyone who bothered to go to the doctor for stitch snipping. I’ve stitched my own wounds twice and both times I went to the Doctor to have them removed. Putting them in was fine as there was an obvious need to do something and adrenalin was high. But when it came to taking them out I was just too squeamish. I also once put my own knee cap back into place after dislocating it. A 6 ft 4 friend who watched me do it turned white and passed out. All these events occurred out in forests miles from hospitals and it seemed to make sense at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2016, 4:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practicing-medicine-vs-advanced-first-aid/705046/30 "2016-06-15T16:16:52Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > Whatever the law may be, I find it hard to imagine that a jury would convict if the action could be demonstrated to have saved the person’s life, or even (if they were not going to die) substantially improved their medical outcome in some way. But the trouble is, what if the person dies not because of your intervention, but despite it? We live in a time when jury decisions are often based on a bad outcome rather than on bad medicine. If you do everything right and the guy dies anyway, they’re going to want someone punished. ---
**Author:** ![Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/a87d85/32.png) [@Tired\_and\_Cranky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tired_and_Cranky)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2016, 4:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practicing-medicine-vs-advanced-first-aid/705046/31 "2016-06-15T16:24:14Z")
I haven’t seen the episode but I have a persistent grudge when Hollywood paints the law as an ass and terrorizes people into wrongly believing their reasonable actions are illegal. The Virginia code makes it illegal to practice medicine without a license as you would expect. The “practice of medicine” includes “the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of human physical or mental ailments, conditions, diseases, pain or infirmities by any means or method.” So, your roadside good Samaritan seems at first blush to be practicing medicine. But the Virginia code also includes a very reasonable exemption that says that practicing medicine without a license provision doesn’t prohibit “Any person from the rendering of first aid or medical assistance in an emergency in the absence of a person licensed to practice medicine or osteopathy under the provisions of this chapter;” (see here: [Exceptions and exemptions generally (§ 54.1-2901)—Virginia Decoded - Virginia Decoded](https://vacode.org/54.1-2901/)) Interestingly, the code does not define “first aid or medical assistance.” If the good Samaritan’s actions were reasonable, necessary to save a person’s life, and resulted in a good outcome, I would be very surprised if any fact finder concluded that his help wasn’t “first aid or medical assistance” within the scope of the exemption. I haven’t done the case law research to confirm my hunch, but I’ll let the Hollywood screenwriters find an example to support their tortured application of the practicing medicine without a license statute. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2016, 4:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practicing-medicine-vs-advanced-first-aid/705046/32 "2016-06-15T16:38:15Z")
The church I used to attend sent their youth group on a mission trip a few years ago, to repair houses in an economically depressed area. One of the chaperones is a physician who wasn’t licensed in the state where they were working, but he could look at an injury and say “It isn’t broken” or “It doesn’t need stitches” (his presence resulted in several ER visits that did not happen 🆒 ) and he also knew how to bandage minor cuts, etc. On a related note, I’ve heard people complain because they went to the local health food store and the people working there wouldn’t recommend anything; s/he might say things like “I have customers who use it” but say no more. I replied that recommending X herbal remedy for Y condition is practicing medicine without a license, and people have been arrested in stings for doing this. I reported a store in my region to the state medical board because I knew they were doing this; IDK if any action was made. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2016, 5:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practicing-medicine-vs-advanced-first-aid/705046/33 "2016-06-15T17:48:26Z")
> [@Bill\_Door](#): > > We live in a time when jury decisions are often based on a bad outcome rather than on bad medicine. If you do everything right and the guy dies anyway, they’re going to want someone punished. If you are trained to perform a procedure, and you do it correctly, and there is a bad outcome then you are likely protected by Good Samaritan laws. If you aren’t trained to perform a procedure there’s less assurance that you did it correctly, and if there’s a bad outcome then you probably aren’t covered by Good Samaritan laws. The details are different in all 50 states, and if there’s a good outcome no one will likely care. But if things go south you may not be protected. ---
**Author:** ![Me\_Billy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e480ec/32.png) [@Me\_Billy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Me_Billy)\ **Post date:** [June 17, 2016, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practicing-medicine-vs-advanced-first-aid/705046/34 "2016-06-17T14:19:56Z")
TV is FANTASY - Nothing to do with reality. They often get facts WRONG! Read your state’s good samaritan laws to learn more about these situations… > **[Good Samaritan law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Samaritan_law)** > > Good Samaritan laws offer legal protection to people who give reasonable assistance to those who are, or whom they believe to be injured, ill, in peril,\[citation needed\] or otherwise incapacitated. The protection is intended to reduce bystanders' hesitation to assist, for fear of being sued or prosecuted for unintentional injury or wrongful death. An example of such a law in common-law areas of Canada: a Good Samaritan doctrine is a legal principle that prevents a rescuer who has voluntarily h Go... TV mistakes… > **[House, M.D. (2004) factual errors](https://www.moviemistakes.com/tv4941/factual)** > > The biggest mistakes you never noticed in House, M.D. (2004). Add more and vote on your favourites! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/practicing-medicine-vs-advanced-first-aid/705046.md?page=1)