Why can’t young doctors intubate patients correctly? Blame television

It seems that residents and medical students are having trouble intubating patients these days.

Apparently, one of the biggest mistakes is positioning the head incorrectly, and the problem is traced back to the television drama ER. When surveyed, most young doctors and medical students cited television as the main source of tips on how to intubate correctly, specifically, ER.

But when researchers actually watched the show, “some aspect of the head positioning was wrong in all 22 intubations that could be fully viewed on screen.”

Oops.

So, the moral of the story is don’t believe everything you see on television. I shudder to think how House, M.D. is influencing the current generation of doctors-in-training.

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