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{{trope}}
{{quote|"''You treated and bandaged the bullet wound to my '''FUCKING UNIFORM!'''''"|'''[[The Dark Id]]''' (as Leon S. Kennedy) to Ada
Fictional first aid is often applied in ways that would be useless or outright counterproductive in [[Real Life]]. There's the reason of safety, as during CPR or the Heimlich maneuver organs in the way are considered to be expendable. There's the practical reason that the audience might prefer their unconsciousness and revival scene without it turning into '' Fun Things To Do With [[Vomit Indiscretion Shot|Vomit]]''. There's the dramatic reason that a character may not actually know first aid, or the work may be a period piece where medical knowledge is less advanced. There's the likely reason that people [[Did Not Do the Research]].
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* Moving injured people without stabilizing their head first.
* Removing impaling foreign objects from wounds. Generally they've smashed all the bits they're going to smash, and are now acting as a plug on the wound - and an infection can be fought off with antibiotics at the hospital. Pull the plug, and you may be dead in minutes. Barbed weapons might tear more flesh and even if they don't, you're unlikely to be able to pull it out at the exact angle it went in.
* [[CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable]] misconceptions:
** Depicting mouth-to-mouth as romantic. Using CPR on that pale, dying individual in your arms has about a 2% chance of revival on its own (and doesn't guarantee that they'll survive what caused that cardiac arrest in the first place). In recent times, official standards have dictated that mouth-to-mouth isn't even recommended if a victim has no pulse.<ref>although this is mainly in the US, and different countries have different recommendations regarding rescue breathing</ref> Just stopping to give breaths could be enough to allow the victim to die. Even when breaths
** In addition, depicting CPR as able to revive somebody alone. CPR is
** Depicting professionals doing mouth-to-mouth in modern times. EMTs and hospital staff will always use a [[wikipedia:Bag valve mask|bag valve mask]], both for hygiene (having a patient throw up in your mouth used to be a rite of passage for paramedics) and because it delivers more oxygen. And typically they will run a tube down their throat first.
** Having a male rescuer get [[squick]]ed about performing mouth-to-mouth on another male, and [[Played for Laughs|playing it for laughs]] that they're placing their [[Have I Mentioned I Am Heterosexual Today?|macho insecurities]] above someone's life.
** Likewise, mouth-to-mouth on a drowning victim only really works if you get most of the water out first.
** In Hollywood, if CPR is ineffective it is perfectly fine to start randomly striking the patient in the chest in an attempt to restart their heart. In real life, this is called a Precordial Thump. It is a ''precisely aimed'' blow delivered by an ''expert'' in an attempt to interrupt a life-threatening rhythm, in the event that a defibrillator is not available, and can only be [[It Only Works Once|attempted ''once'']]. Like a defibrillator, it cannot restore an asystolic heart. (It is also sometimes suggested as first thing to try if the heart of victim was stopped by electricity, but only in this case and only once, as in this case, heart might not be damaged and only need small impulse to start beating again. But its rare case and should precede CPR, not follow it.)▼
* Disregarding the security of an accident scene or even personal safety, in violation of the most important rule: Avoid increasing the number of casualties. Rushing onto the freeway isn't any more safe because there's an upended car on it. This one's popular in real life – paramedics get called out at least weekly in some areas for accidents caused by people running onto the freeway to help.
▲* In Hollywood, if CPR is ineffective it is perfectly fine to start randomly striking the patient in the chest in an attempt to restart their heart. In real life, this is called a Precordial Thump. It is a ''precisely aimed'' blow delivered by an ''expert'' in an attempt to interrupt a life-threatening rhythm, in the event that a defibrillator is not available, and can only be [[It Only Works Once|attempted once]]. Like a defibrillator, it cannot restore an asystolic heart. (It is also sometimes suggested as first thing to try if the heart of victim was stopped by electricity, but only in this case and only once, as in this case, heart might not be damaged and only need small impulse to start beating again. But its rare case and should precede CPR, not follow it.)
* The Miraculous Bitchslap Of Life. Somebody isn't breathing, or there's no pulse, and their buddy gets all emotional and angry and slaps them a couple of times, perhaps accompanied by a [[How Dare You Die on Me!]] speech. After a few seconds they come around.
* Putting someone's head back when they have a nosebleed- you risk making them choke or puke from swallowing the blood.
* Person has hypothermia? Throw them in hot water! In real life, this would cause their core temperature to shoot right up, inviting the colder fluid from the extremities in. The resulting diffusion would make the person even colder, or worse, mess up their heart.
* Beginning care on a conscious adult without consent. The person can sue for assault and battery, and this applies even to choking victims.
* Pushing a barbed arrow through the flesh to remove it. Often depicted as the "correct" way due to the actual right way (plugging barbs with two quills, then pulling it) [[History Marches On|being found in documents only rediscovered in the late 1800s]].
Spotting or MSTing such depictions is good for a lark. Unfortunately, [[Reality Is Unrealistic]], so they are likely not harmless and it might be a good idea for a media fiend to take a first aid course. Depending on your country, any mid-sized or larger city should offer an initial 2-4 day - hey. Hey!
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See also [[CPR: Clean, Pretty, Reliable]], [[Magical Defibrillator]], [[Suck Out the Poison]], [[Shot to the Heart]], [[Flatline]] and [[You Fail Your Medical Boards Forever]]; compare [[Annoying Arrows]].
{{examples}}
▲== Anime & Manga ==
* Rock in ''[[Black Lagoon]]'' - After the final fight of the Tokyo story arc, {{spoiler|Revy's leg is impaled all the way through by Ginji's katana. What does Rock do? Why, rip the sword out of her leg of course! It's incredible that Revy didn't bleed to death.}}
* [[Subverted Trope|Subverted]] by ''[[Love Hina]]'': during a holiday on the beach, Shinobu pretends to be unconscious in order to trick Keitaro into performing mouth-to-mouth on her. She is surprised by how methodical and unromantic he is (following all the proper steps); in the end she can't go through with it, and [[Groin Attack|accidentally kicks Keitaro in the crotch]] instead.
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* In ''[[Strike Witches]]'' Yoshika attempts to use her [[Healing Hands]] on a sailor that likely has broken ribs and shrapnel lodged in his torso. She's told to stop by another sailor who knows she's only making it worse due to her lack of experience. And probably because it looks like said magical healing is basically boosting the regeneration rate over the unset bones, bits of shrapnel and likely destroyed blood vessels. She smartly settles on using her super-strength to ferry medical supplies.
== [[Comic Books]] ==
== Comics ==▼
* In ''[[Lucky Luke]]'', whenever someone has nearly drowned, the usual method of revival is to pull their arms (or front paws, in case of Rantanplan) back and forth, thus pumping the water out of the body. The same technique has been used in older cartoons, since Silvester Method of artificial respiration and dates back to the 19th Century (or early 20th, at least). There's also the Holger-Neilson method, which was used prior to the innovation of modern CPR in 1960. Both have since been shown to be highly dangerous.
* There's a rather interesting aversion in the ''[[2000 AD]]'' comic "Disaster 1990", back in '79. The protagonist gets shot in the belly with a harpoon, and explicitly remarks that he'll have to leave it in despite the pain, since removing it would just cause bleeding. The fact that he pointed it out shows that the writer was aware of this trope.
* In-universe example of the trope in ''[[The Smurfs]]'' comic book story "Doctor Smurf", as the title character's less-than-perfect idea of first aid often causes some fairly realistic (if still cartoonish) damage to his patients.
* In ''[[The Abyss]]'', the female lead has pretty much drowned. Her skin is waxy and white, and she's obviously not breathing. The medical team tries CPR, rescue breathing and a defibrillator, all of which fail to do anything. Then, in a moment of desperation, the main character bitchslap her twice, then shake her for a good 10 seconds, all while [[Please Wake Up|desperately screaming]] [[Cluster F-Bomb|a string of curses at her]], and she comes right to. It is [[Truth in Television]] that it takes a good amount of heating up for a deeply-hypothermic body to resume function, so thinking it's too late when she's not warm enough yet to revive is at least plausible, though there are plenty of other problems with her resuscitation besides that. In the [[Novelization]], it's suggested the aliens had a hand in many things, including this.
* In the live-action film version of ''[[Inspector Gadget]]'', an early trailer shows him going into arrest during the transformation surgery. How does the doctor revive him? The MBL, of course! The scene didn't make the final film; although obviously meant to be [[Played for Laughs]], Disney probably considered it a bit too much for the intended audience.
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* In ''[[Kick-Ass (film)|Kick-Ass]],'' after Dave is {{spoiler|hit by a car}}, the next scene shows the paramedics putting a C-collar on him to immobilise his spine... in the back of the ambulance. Meaning that they have already moved him quite a bit. Which, really, makes the whole thing kind of pointless.
== [[Literature]] ==
* ''[[The Last Book in the Universe]]'' is one of many works in which a character undergoing a seizure gets a stick stuck in his mouth to prevent him from biting his tongue. In this case, it doesn't quite work as intended—the stick simply breaks in half. (In real life, this is a fortunate outcome, since he could have broken his jaw instead.)
* ''[[Anne of Green Gables]]'': Administering ipecac (which is supposed to be for inducing vomiting) to a croup patient. [[Captain Obvious|Big no-no]] now, but was the standard treatment protocol in the early 20th century.
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* In ''Halo'' by Alexandra Adornetto, [[The Protagonist|Bethany]] pulls a badly injured girl from a car wreck despite the fact that the car was neither [[Every Car Is a Pinto|on fire nor about to explode]]. She doesn't do it very well, either. The girl is near-death and bleeding from a head wound, yet Bethany throws the girl's arm over her shoulder and hauls her out of the vehicle.
▲== Live Action TV ==
* ''[[Stargate Atlantis]]'':
** In the episode "Search and Rescue", Sheppard is impaled in the side by a piece of metal. Ronon yanks it out and bandages the wound. This is wrong in so many ways.
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* In an episode of ''[[Sanctuary]]'', while cut off from professional help, Will Zimmerman doses himself with morphine several times despite having sustained a head injury bad enough to ''temporarily blind him.''
▲== Pro Wrestling ==
* At a WCW Clash of the Champions show in 1989 (Sept. 12 to be exact), Terry Funk "suffocated" Ric Flair with a plastic bag. Brian Pillman ran in and gave him mouth-to-mouth, using a towel as a mouth barrier. A surprising subversion, nearly a decade before [[Family Matters|Steve Urkel used a barrier when giving Carl Winslow CPR]].
* One episode of ''RAW'' that featured JBL being slammed through the roof of his go-to-the-ring limo. (This was before he went to just announcing.) The medics dragged his "unconscious" body out of the limo by one foot and ''then'' got out the neck collar and backboard.
* An episode of ''Nitro'' had one of the wrestlers injured. The paramedics said it looked like a neck injury. Then they moved him on the stretcher... ''by the neck''.
== [[Tabletop Games]] ==
* One ''[[Unknown Armies]]'' sample campaign features the player characters coming up to a three-car pileup of twisted metal, and the sheriff on the scene informing the players that they ''[[But Thou Must!|must]]'' try to get the crash victims out of the vehicles before the [[Every Car Is a Pinto|sparking electrical systems and spilled gasoline mix]]. Characters with any medical skill or a high mind stat are told that doing so is incredibly dangerous when a cell phone exists (not that the [[MythBusters]] [[wikipedia:MythBusters (2003 season)#Cell Phone Destruction|would agree]]), the sheriff [[But Thou Must!|makes the characters do so anyway]]. {{spoiler|[[Justified Trope|On the other hand]], the "sheriff" is the Comte De Saint-Germain and doesn't care whether the crash victims live or die, only that they [[Time Travel Tense Trouble|don't ever have crashed in the first place]], and has more than enough power to blow the cars to kingdom come.}} Players who talk about stabilizing the heads and necks of the car crash victims are encouraged to have [[Schrödinger's Gun|better luck or experience rewards]], too.
* In ''[[Dungeons & Dragons]]'', it's possible to accidentally injure or even kill your patient if you try to heal someone and screw up the skill check badly enough.
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* In ''[[Paranoia (game)|Paranoia]]'', the role of docbots is basically to show up after a firefight and kill off the survivors. Well, The Computer says otherwise, but when their standard peripherals include surgical ''[[Chainsaw Good|chainsaws]]''...
== [[Video Games]] ==
* In ''[[Splinter Cell]] Chaos Theory'', the antagonist commits [[Seppuku]], and you need him alive. Solution? Oh just rip that knife right out of him. Just for good measure, shoot the windows out of the underwater base so you can carry him while swimming. And of course, in this life-or-death situation where seconds count, Sam takes the time to [[Gameplay and Story Segregation|respectfully set the knife down]].
* ''[[Far Cry]] 2'' requires the player to perform quick "medical care" in the field when injured if his or her health drops to one bar. This generally involves resetting broken bones with your bare hands (which promptly begin working immediately), pulling pieces of shrapnel and stray branches from your gut (which doesn't cause the wound to start spurting blood all over the place), and removing bullets with pliers, all without even bandaging the wound up and immediately getting back into the fight. If your health is at least two bars, healing involves simply injecting yourself with a shot of morphine. If a buddy is critically injured, you can heal them simply by injecting them as well. Otherwise, the only options are comforting them in their passing or blowing their brains out to hasten it.
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* In the old versions of ''[[Madden NFL]]'', if a player was down on the field an ambulance would come out to get them, '''completely flattening any other player in its path.'''
== [[Web Animation]] ==▼
▲== Web Animation ==
* Played with in ''[[Red vs. Blue]]'' after Sarge gets shot in the head. Due to the limits of the physics engine, the creators took the limited actions the characters could to and had them [[Played for Laughs]].
{{quote|'''Sarge:''' What-what happened here?
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** It doesn't help very much when they get an actual medic—a medic who thinks CPR is a perfectly acceptable treatment for a bullet wound to the head, rubs someone's neck with aloe vera when his pinkie toe falls off, and has no clue what his medical scanning device actual means. As Doc himself said: Doctors make you better, medics make you more comfortable while you die.
== [[Web Original]] ==▼
▲== Web Original ==
* The title character of [[Doctor Moley Can Help]], a web series by the creators of [[Chad Vader]], is a doctor who had a disturbing obsession with pills. It regularly gets to the point where [[Your Answer to Everything|he has a pill of some sort for nearly every problem]] including ''pill overdose''.
** [[It Gets Worse]]: Dr. Moley openly frowns upon more commonplace medical proceedures. In fact when explaining his solution to pill overdoes, he made a point of stating that you need to ''shove a wet towel under your door'' to ''keep the ambulance from getting to you'' before you take another pill, because you know, [[Sarcasm Mode|it's not like you'll be comatose or anything]].
== [[Western Animation]] ==
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* On ''[[Adventure Time]]'', when a bear is choking on nuts, Finn slaps a book on its back to save it. In reality, '''you should never do this'''. It will just make things worse.
== [[Real Life]] ==▼
▲== Real Life ==
* This is sadly [[Truth in Television]], and happens many times, from negligent medical personnel to well meaning but ultimately clueless samaritans.
* Some British tropers who were in secondary school in the second half of the 1990s might recall an "instructional" First Aid video about putting someone in the Recovery Position when unconscious. The example used? A cyclist involved in a hit-and-run, a scenario with a ''very'' high probability of spinal injury. This might be a result of [[Science Marches On]], as recovery prospects for spinal injuries are a lot better than they were ten years ago, but it's still cringe-worthy in hindsight.
** Oh, and this same first-aid course apparently consisted of CPR, the Heimlich Manoeuvre and the Recovery Position and that was ''it''. Nothing on recognising the symptoms of a stroke or heart attack -the subjects of major public-awareness campaigns so that people seek medical assistance before their condition becomes life-threatening - or dealing with [[Alliteration|burns, bleeding or a broken bone.]]
* This is how [[Steve Irwin]] died. A stingray stabbed him in the heart, he yanked it out. If he hadn't, he might have lived.
* In one famous case, lifeguards were resuscitating a victim, but instead of breathing, they were saying, "breath, breath" as they did in practice.
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]▼
[[Category:Television Is Trying to Kill Us]]
[[Category:Doctor Index]]
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[[Category:Just for Pun]]
[[Category:Artistic License Medicine]]
▲[[Category:{{PAGENAME}}]]
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