History Main / WorstAid

* In an episode of ''Series/BandOfBrothers'', Lt. Moose Heyliger [[UnfriendlyFire gets shot by one of their own soldiers]] and Captain Winters and Lt. Welsh give him multiple syringes of morphine before the medics arrive. Once Doc Roe arrives on the scene, he asks how many syrettes they used and ''they don't know'' (it was three, when ''two'' is a lot). Roe angrily informs them that they are officers and should damn well know better. Moose ends up surviving, fortunately, but he's out of combat for the rest of the campaign.

* ''VideoGame/TombRaider2013'': Within the opening moments of the game, Lara falls onto a piece of rebar and is [[ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice impaled through the gut]] by it. She then proceeds to pull it out, and said wound getting aggravated or worse impedes her progress more than once over the course of the game.

* In the days before anesthesia, British surgeon Robert Liston was famed not only for his skill in amputations, but his ''speed'' as well. Anecdotes from the era describe him as a doctor who took such great pride in the speed of his operations that he would declare "Time me, gentlemen!" before performing an amputation. One apocryphal anecdote, in particular, speaks of one surgery with a ''[[EpicFail 300% mortality rate]]'', killing not only the patient and a nurse holding down the (fully conscious) patient with gangrene when he cut off the patient's leg and the nurse's fingers, but a spectator who thought he got cut when Liston's bloody saw cut his coat, causing him to have a panic-induced heart attack. [[ZigZaggingTrope That said]], there was a legitimate reason for his speed: the faster he finished the operation, the less pain the patient suffered and the less risk they had of dying of infection or blood loss, plus he was a big believer in things that other surgeons of his time saw as unnecessary, like washing his hands or changing out his bloody apron before each operation, which further increased the survival rates of his patients[[note]]It was said he had a mortality rate of 1 in 10, while the nearby St. Bartholomew's Hospital had a rate of 1 in 4[[/note]]. He was also the one to perform the first public operation to use modern anesthesia.

* On ''Series/LasVegas'', Mike passes out from anaphylaxis while visiting a Wyoming ranch because he's allergic to horses. One of the wranglers injects him with her Epi-pen, and he revives immediately and goes back to hanging around with horses, even though epinephrine injections are a ''temporary'' lifesaving measure to buy time for the victim to get to the hospital for observation and possible antihistamine therapy.
* The ''Series/LawAndOrderSVU'' episode "Bombshell" has the wonderful scene where a bystander ''yanked the knife out'' and his girlfriend ''tried sticking it back in'' when it started spurting blood all over.

* ''Series/TheWalkingDead'', Andrea decides to prove that Beth isn't suicidal (immediately after the death of her mother and brother) by leaving her alone to do what she wants. Then, when Beth's attempted suicide (which she's spent the entire episode actively seeking) fails, Andrea concludes "She wants to live." No, dumbass, she wants to die, she just didn't do it right.
* {{Lampshaded}} numerous times on ''Series/WorldsDumbest'' whenever an idiot gets himself knocked out and the idiots around him do everything you're not supposed to do with an unconscious person.
-->"You, slap him! You, shake him! You, pour water in his mouth! Okay, go!"

** After James leaves Vault 101 in ''VideoGame/{{Fallout 3}}'', the resident Mister Handy robot, [[PunnyName Andy]], is assigned to be the Vault's {{Autodoc}}. Beatrice meets her demise at his hands when he attempts to treat her sprained left big toe, but ends up amputating her right leg instead. Let's be clear - the amputation ''was'' the treatment, but Andy screwed up ''which leg had the injured toe''.

* ''VideoGame/TheWalkingDead'' bears many examples over the course of the series, largely thanks to the fact that proper medical treatment is almost impossible to find in a ZombieApocalypse.
** Season 1 has a character bitten on the wrist by a walker and, depending on player choice, trying to save himself by cutting his arm off. The only tools he uses for this procedure are a torniquet, a bonesaw, and some bandages. [[spoiler:Unsurprisingly, he dies regardless of whether he removes the limb or not.]]
** Season 3 depicts a character getting shot in the abdomen, and if Javier goes with her instead of staying with Clementine, he ends up needing to force the wound to stay open by ''pulling it apart'' with most likely unwashed hands while a doctor goes fishing for the bullet.
** Two separate examples in ''The Final Season''. [[spoiler:The first instance is when AJ gets shot by a raider, forcing Clem to pry buckshots out of his stomach with a dirty knife while another character holds him down and keeps him quiet. The second and more egrigeous example is in the final episode, when Clementine is bitten. Instead of killing or leaving her behind, AJ decides to amputate her infected leg with the ax he and Clem have been using to kill walkers with for the past few in-game hours. He then cauterizes the wound and pours walker guts all over her to mask her scent. Despite the fact that she should have gangrene from the cauterization or still be infected because of the guts on her body and on the ax that removed her leg, she makes a full recovery.]]

* All Artificial Respiration in cartoons takes the form of the Schafer method, lying the victim on his/her belly and shoving upwards and forwards from below the diaphragm. In cartoons this always squirts water comically from the mouth. Not a method used much nowadays.

** 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 burns, bleeding or a broken bone.

* Lot of people give CPR the same way many actors do -- with their arms bent and using almost no pressure and breathing in mouth without covering the nose. Others start right, but stop when ribs break, thinking they did it wrong, even though a few broken ribs are the least of the patient's concerns right now - those can heal, but the patient won't be coming back unless you revive them. One of first things said in first-aid courses is "If you hear loud cracks, don't stop. Those were ribs. They won't need them if they die." The 2010 standards revision suggests that compressions are more valuable than ventilations and move some air on their own through the pressure on the chest, so anyone without training is requested to do compression only CPR.
* In Italian driving schools the teachers explain how to rescue victims of car crashes by keeping away anyone who isn't trained in first aid, specifically to prevent well-meaning but ignorant helpers from accidentally killing the patient.
* United States President UsefulNotes/JamesGarfield was shot InTheBack by a crazed office seeker in 1881. If the doctors had confined themselves to sewing him up and giving him chicken soup, Garfield probably would have lived. But since it was 1881 and the work of Louis Pasteur (the germ theory of disease) and Joseph Lister (antiseptic surgery) was not universally accepted, especially in America, the doctors spent much of the summer sticking unsterilized instruments and ''their bare unwashed fingers'' into Garfield's back as they tried to find the bullet. Because WeHaveToGetTheBulletOut. Garfield fell victim to out-of-control infection and died eleven weeks after he was shot. In fact, Garfield's assassin defended himself at his trial with the argument "The doctors killed Garfield, I merely shot him" (which is [[MetaphoricallyTrue technically true]] if you ignore the fact that the doctors wouldn't have been giving Garfield the treatment that led to the infection had he not been shot in the first place, thus making it FelonyMurder anyway even if the assassin hadn't ''meant'' to kill him). The jury still found him guilty.

* The practice of bloodletting (removing significant quantities of blood) was a common practice in the 18th century that may have (if not directly caused) hastened the death of UsefulNotes/GeorgeWashington following the first President becoming ill suddenly in December 1799. The rationale behind the practice was to remove the "bad blood" in the hopes that the disease would go with it. There is actually a use for bloodletting, and it is still used today, but only for a VERY VERY specific condition, called hemochromatosis, an excess of iron in the blood. The condition can result from a genetic defect (which makes it chronic), or an excess of iron introduced from blood transfusions. In these cases, carefully controlled amounts of bloodletting are used to relieve the iron overload. In this case, it's not called bloodletting, but therapeutic phlebotomy. This condition was not something that was known before the modern day.

* As mentioned on the OverTheShoulderCarry RealLife section, this as a result of the poor medical training most band crews/roadies tend to have probably exacerbated Music/YoshikiHayashi's neck and back injuries. Crew and roadies carried him off the stage in ways that, if you have any knowledge of spinal cord injury, are absolutely ''cringeworthy.'' After he actually broke his neck onstage in 1995, he was carried offstage by untrained roadies rather than left in place to be properly removed from the stage by paramedics with proper stabilizing equipment, and his crew did the same thing after he collapsed from exhaustion in 2008 despite having existing spinal cord injury and no neck brace at the time.

* The aforementioned "treatment" for frostbite, rubbing snow on the affected area, was used until the 1950s which resulted in gangrene.
* In the days before anesthesia, British surgeon Robert Liston was famed not only for his skill in amputations, but his ''speed'' as well. Anecdotes from the era describe him as a doctor who took such great pride in the speed of his operations that he would declare "Time me, gentlemen!" before performing an amputation. One apocryphal anecdote, in particular, speaks of one surgery with a ''[[EpicFail 300% mortality rate]]'', killing not only the patient and a nurse holding down the (fully conscious) patient with gangrene when he cut off the patient's leg and the nurse's fingers, but a spectator who thought he got cut when Liston's bloody saw cut his coat, causing him to have a panic-induced heart attack. [[ZigZaggingTrope That said]], there was a legitimate reason for his speed, being that the faster he finished the operation the less pain the patient suffered and the less risk they had of dying of infection or blood loss, plus he was a big believer in things that other surgeons of his time saw as unnecessary, like washing his hands or changing out his bloody apron before each operation, which further increased the survival rates of his patients[[note]]It was said he had a mortality rate of 1 in 10, while the nearby St. Bartholomew's Hospital had a rate of 1 in 4[[/note]]. He was also the one to perform the first public operation to use modern anesthesia.

* United States President UsefulNotes/JamesGarfield was shot InTheBack by a crazed office seeker in 1881. If the doctors had confined themselves to sewing him up and giving him chicken soup, Garfield probably would have lived. But since it was 1881 and the work of Louis Pasteur (the germ theory of disease) and Joseph Lister (antiseptic surgery) was not universally accepted, especially in America, the doctors spent much of the summer sticking unsterilized instruments and ''their bare unwashed fingers'' into Garfield's back as they tried to find the bullet. Because WeHaveToGetTheBulletOut. Garfield fell victim to out-of-control infection and died eleven weeks after he was shot. In fact, Garfield's assassin defended himself at his trial with the argument "The doctors killed Garfield, I merely shot him" (which is [[MetaphoricallyTrue technically true]] if you ignore the fact that the doctors wouldn't have been giving Garfield the treatment that led to the infection had he not been shot in the first place). The jury still found him guilty.

** Similarly; taking very large amounts of NSAIDs for pain due to inflammation. With high doses and prolonged use, many of those drugs can seriously mess up someone's stomach - especially if they have a prior history of ulcers.

* In ''WesternAnimation/SamuraiJack2017'', Jack gets stabbed near his stomach and falls into a river with the knife still deep in the wound, after pulling the knife out and losing consciousness he sews up the wound with an animal's bone shard and tree bark without disinfecting it, likely causing bacteria to enter considering that it had already been ample time since he removed the knife.

* In ''Manga/JojosBizarreAdventureGoldenWind'', Mista takes a gunshot wound during his fight with Sale. How do Narancia and Fugo help with no way of going to a hospital or healing him with their Stands? By ''stapling the wound shut''. At least Mista thinks it looks cool.

* Deconstructed in ''Film/TrueGrit''. In the original, the protagonist applies the correct treatment for a snake bite and the victim recovers without much damage. In the remake he uses the "suck out the poison method." Said victim loses an arm in the remake. It helps that in the remake they don't have any method to treat it so Cogburn tries to get her to a doctor as soon as possible, but it takes some time....[[note]]This is an interesting case: when the original was made, the first aid being taught ''was'' the suck-out-the-poison method. Sometime between the two, conventional wisdom decided that it did more harm than good and the treatment shifted back to the simpler "tourniquet, wound lower than heart, don't cut, don't suck". So in both cases the method used in the film is not the one being recommended at the time, but an older treatment.[[/note]]

* In the ''[[Literature/AmericanGirlsCollection Girls Of Many Lands]]'' book ''Cecile: Gates of Gold'', the protagonist's father, a doctor, had been exiled from the French court for his strong stance against bloodletting, specifically for his public assertion that a senior doctor killed the king's brother by bleeding him. At the book's climax, the royal family contracts measles and the doctors decide to bleed them. This causes the death of the King, the Queen, and their eldest son, but Cecile and some of the younger son's nursemaids manage to spare him from this fate by barricading him and themselves in the child's nursery. Cecile is exiled from court as punishment, but because she [[ArsonMurderandLifesaving did save the prince's life]], the royal family also arranges a place for her at an elite school so she can have a future.