Doctors pour scorn on China's medical TV shows: point out five most egregious mistakes

by Michael Woodhead
One of China's most popular TV shows is the medical drama "Young Doctors". Modelled on similar hugely popular shows from Korean TV, the show is all about the lives and loves of a handful of beautiful, smart and successful young doctors. 
China's real young doctors are not impressed - but they are laughing. On the medical social media site DXY. net they have been pointing out the many ridiculous factual errors and goofs in the show. The top five are:

1. Hand hygiene howler: Ming Ming has donned sterile gloves but then adjusts her glasses - an obvious no-no from an infection control point of view

2. Scans all wrong: - holding X-ray pictures the wrong way round - pointing to a chest X-ray and and diagnosing a broken leg, looking for pneumonia in a CT scan of the head ...

3. White coat wearing - on the TV show, doctors never button up their white coats, but wear them open and flapping like fashionable casual wear.

4. Novel medical theories: mahjong can prevent Alzheimers, people wake up from prolonged vegetative state.

5. Miracle patients: man with tracheal obstruction on breathing machine can speak quite clearly with beautiful dialogue.

However, China's medics are more impressed with the other medical drama The Obstetrician. Written by a playwright, it is nevertheless quite authentic as it relies on real cases histories and the scriptwriters consulted medical professionals over the technical details.

Guangdong hospital mocked for celebrating 40,000 patient admissions

Microbloggers have poured scorn on a hospital that displayed a banner celebrating its 40,000th inpatient admission.
The People’s Hospital in Wuchuan displayed a large banner on its outside wall proclaiming: “Warmly congratulate our hospital on breaking through [over] 40,000 hospitalised patients in 2012.”
The banner was noticed by a microblogger called Ming on Sina Weibo, He said that he'd noticed the banner while visiting his sick mother on November 29.
Ming told the local paper that the banner was in poor taste and made him “feel sad and discontent,” so he decided to snap a picture and post it on Weibo.
His post was forwarded by thousands of people online and many called it callous and insensitive.
Within days, as the news of stye banner spread, it was taken down and instead  banners proclaimed:  "Congratulations to our hospital to the success of this year to exceed two hundred cases of laparoscopic surgery cases," "Congratulations to the hospital IT department for setting up outpatient workstations", and  "Congratulations to our hospital for cataract the free surgical cases breakthrough nineteen hundred people. The Wuchuan City People's Hospital "propaganda" department  said the number of hospital admissions had risen from 12,000 in 2006 up to 35,800 people in 2011.
Source: Southern Farmer's Weekly (Nanfang Nongcun Bao)