‘Grey’s Anatomy’ Glosses Over Intern Recklessness
The May 29 edition of the Los Angeles Times included a very interesting piece written by Dr. Marc Siegel regarding the recent Grey’s Anatomy second-season finale. In a nutshell, he thinks the show was unrealistic in numerous ways, and about the only thing that was accurate was “the correct use of phenobarbital to put Dr. Meredith Grey’s dog to sleep because of incurable bone cancer.” Otherwise, he states:
T[he] jockeying for a heart transplant is very competitive, and a patient’s position on the transplant list — in addition to the severity of his or her condition — determine the order. However, a prospective heart transplant patient would never sign a Do Not Resuscitate order — surgeons would not operate on such a patient because resuscitation may be necessary at any point.
Second, if a heart assistance pump were disconnected, a loud alarm would sound.
Third, interns could never monitor a sick heart patient for such a prolonged period of time without intervention by at least a nurse, if not a more senior physician. In the show, the interns watch Denny’s heart stop, resuscitate him, give him emergency medication — all without observation or intervention. In real life, such a stunt would be cause for Izzie’s immediate arrest for attempted murder; the other interns would likely be kicked out of the residency program.
It is also unrealistic how little time is spent trying to salvage the first heart that was originally intended for Denny.
My subconscious suspicions about the points mentioned in Dr. Siegel’s informal analysis (since I’m not in the medical field, that’s all I had to rely on while I was watching) are the main reasons why I gave the three-hour, overly long, and totally preposterous second-season finale of ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ a resounding “Sucked!” vote. Sure, it’s just fiction and TV, but there’s still a certain standard of believability that needs to be maintained in a drama for sense to be made. What were the writers et al. thinking, turning compassionate but tough-cookie-in-progress Izzie into a driveling, sniveling, hyperventilating, delusional, sickeningly temperamental wreck? Surely there’s a better way to communicate intense feminine emotions than that.
It’s bad enough they killed off Denny. The least the Grey’s Anatomy people could have done was allowed Izzie to demonstrate a bit of composure in the face of such a heartbreaking situation. Women don’t need TV shows reinforcing tired stereotypes by portraying us as instant train wrecks whenever we encounter a critical problem in our personal and professional relationships. One illogical, irresponsible, and profoundly irritating Meredith on the show is more than enough, thank you.
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