History Main / WorstAid

* ''FarCry 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, pulling pieces of shrapnel and stray branches from your gut, and removing bullets with pliers, all without even bandaging the wound up an 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.

** [[NeverSpeakIllOfTheDead Due respect]], people. [[SecondhandLions He went out with his boots on]].

** [[DoNotSpeakIllOfTheDead Due respect]], people. [[SecondhandLions He went out with his boots on]].

* Moving injured people without stabilizing their head for no good reason, or because the car they're in is about to [[EveryCarIsAPinto spontaneously combust]].
* 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, keeping in bits that would otherwise fall out. (And which the wounded person would really prefer to stay put.) AnnoyingArrows is a subtrope where said foreign object is an arrow or a bullet.
* Depicting mouth-to-mouth as romantic. She lies in your arms, helpless and vulnerable. [[DefrostingIceQueen Cold and standoffish]] only moments before, she now depends on you for her very survival and awaits your touch of IntimateHealing to open her sea-blue eyes and cast a soulful gaze to yours as she runs her fingers on your cheek. Meanwhile you're locking lips with an obvious [[DudeShesLikeInAComa near-corpse]] in an attempt to work it with your bare hands, cracking ribs sooner or later if you're doing it right, and if the lips trouble you, you can cover the nostrils with your mouth and blow. An airhole is an airhole.
** In addition, mouth-to-mouth and CPR are only effective on their own about 2% of the time, and [[SarcasmMode everyone knows a 98% chance of death creates the perfect sexy mood.]] [[RealityEnsues Even in the rare 2%, the receiver often vomits upon regaining consciousness.]] [[YourMileageMayVary So hot.]]
** In short, they are not life-saving techniques, they are life prolonging techniques designed to keep someone in some sort of recoverable state while actual help arrives.

* Using a shirt or other article of clothing as a makeshift tourniquet to stop bleeding for a gunshot wound. While this allows for the male lead to [[ShirtlessScene show off his mighty torso]], it's a very ''bad'' idea in real life because it deprives the limb in question of the blood it needs to continue functioning. Without hospital care, this will result in the limb becoming necrotic and [[NiceJobBreakingItHero falling off]].
* As in the quote above, putting bandages on the outside of clothing will fuse the clothing to the wound. This causes the wound to be re-opened later, and will cause infection, meaning things will start falling off.
* 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 attempted once. Also like a defibrillator, it cannot restore an asystolic heart. However, if you are on TV, feel free to jump up and down on a corpse's sternum until they come back to life.

Spotting or [=MSTing=] such depictions is good for a lark. Unfortunately RealityIsUnrealistic, 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!

* Depicting mouth-to-mouth as romantic. She lies in your arms, helpless and vulnerable. [[DefrostingIceQueen Cold and standoffish]] only moments before, she now depends on you for her very survival and awaits your touch of IntimateHealing to open her sea-blue eyes and cast a soulful gaze to yours as she runs her fingers on your cheek. Meanwhile you're locking lips with an obvious near-corpse in an attempt to work it with your bare hands, cracking ribs sooner or later if you're doing it right, and if the lips trouble you, you can cover the nostrils with your mouth and blow. An airhole is an airhole.

->'''Leon:''' "''You treated and bandaged the bullet wound to my FUCKING UNIFORM! Heaven forbid we lose one of the RPD's finest officer uniforms, you tart.''"

[[folder:AnimeAndManga]]

* In Detective Conan, a secondary character fights a murderer and in the process is stabbed in the arm. At the end of the fight, he ''pulls the knife out'' of his arm. What an idiot.

--> '''Sherlock:''' [examining the body] The knife was removed to alleviate the victim's pain. The knife was then re-inserted in an attempt to stem the bleeding. This second insertion was the cause of death.
--> '''Watson:''' God lord, Holmes, how on Earth could you tell that?
--> '''Sherlock:''' I was watching you from the doorway, and frankly I couldn't believe my eyes.
* ''TheRuins''... oh, good lord, ''The Ruins'': first, they accidentally drop a guy a couple of stories, discover that he can't move or even feel his legs, and-- even though they speculate that he may have a broken back and argue that it is a bad idea-- proceed to ''pick him up'' between them and move him (horrific CRUNCH noises included). Then they decide to [[spoiler: amputate his infected legs]] by [[spoiler: breaking his bones with a rock and cauterizing the stumps with a ''frying pan''.]] ''[[{{Squick}} All.]] [[NauseaFuel On.]] [[NightmareFuelUnleaded Screen.]]''
** All of this on the advice of a ''pre-med'' student.
*** ''2'' of them were pre-med students, actually.

* In ''PanicRoom'', the daughter is going into seizures because her blood sugar is so ''low'', and they can't find her a snack... so they inject her with ''insulin'', which is what you do for the ''[[YouFailBiologyForever exact opposite problem]]''. For some reason, this works instead of killing her.
** Actually, the film is very accurate in its portrayal of diabetes. She is injected with glucagon, a hormone which raises blood-sugar levels by releasing stored glucose. It is the first-aid treatment for severe hypoglycaemia. Burnham even holds up a vial of insulin only to be told "no the other one".
*** Ironically, the writers overlook the fact that a large dose of insulin is potentially fatal, and could have been used against the attackers, resulting in their death within five minutes of it being injected.
**** Also, given that Sarah at one point does stab Raoul with the syringes, to little effect, this is a missed opportunity.
***** And even more so that even without insulin, an empty syringe can deliver a fatal air embolism

* ''JurassicPark''. Game warden Muldoon and paleobotanist Ellie Sattler find [[DeadpanSnarker Ian Malcolm]] delirious, moaning, and with a broken leg, having barely survived a ''T.rex'' attack. They want to take him back with them for treatment, but consider the possibility that he has internal injuries they can't see.
--> '''Ellie:''' Do we chance moving him?
--> ''(T.rex roars somewhere in the vicinity)''
--> '''Malcolm:''' (sits up) ''Please'', chance it.
** In the original literature, Malcolm is nowhere near as lucid, and Muldoon and Gennaro make the decision of moving him themselves (thankfully, there's no immediate threat to put the pressure on them.) However, his injuries are severe enough, and he goes without proper treatment so long, that he dies from them near the end of the book. At least, [[IGotBetter until the sequel]].
* In StarshipTroopers (the film anyway), Rico's girlfriend / fling Dizzy is impaled through the intestines by one of the bugs. He gets her to safety with the bugs leg still attached and then immediately ''yanks it out'', causing her to bleed to death about 30 seconds later. She may well have survived if he'd just kept it in there long enough to make it back to a medical station.
* In ''Mission Impossible 3,'' Michelle Monaghan [[strike:beats the crap out her patient]] performs multiple precordial chest thumps to restore an asystolic heart. Congratulations, you [[strike:now have a corpse with a broken sternum]] brought him back to life. [[/folder]]

* ''AnneOfGreenGables'': Administering ipecac (which is supposed to be for inducing vomiting) to a croup patient. [[CaptainObvious Big no-no.]]

* In the ''StargateAtlantis'' 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.
** Ronon has also pulled an arrow out of his own leg once and popped his dislocated shoulder back into place.
*** Isn't it possible to put a dislocated shoulder back into place manually? I mean, you'd want to be sure that nothing was broken, but still.
*** It is possible to fix a dislocated shoulder, but it is incredibly, brutally painful (especially when it's your own).
** In an earlier episode, [=McKay=] gets stabbed in the arm, and shows up the next day with a bandage...around his ''sleeve''.
*** As this is Rodney we're talking about, it's entirely possible he just wanted a visible bandage to garner sympathy.
*** He also claims he had to do it himself.

** Also, the frequency they grab some sort of drug to stop the seizure- as a general rule, all you can do is make the person comfortable and wait it out.
** The British music movie ''24 Hour Party People'' shows the ultimate in ''not'' helping an epileptic fit -- Backstage as Joy Division's Ian Curtis has a fit, bassist Hooky, instead of offering any help, bends down and retrieves his cigarettes from Ian's pocket; "he's still got me fags". Of course this is a film based on RealLife, but whether ''that'' actually happened is open to question...

* PlayedForLaughs in ''MyNameIsEarl'': When Earl gets shivved in prison, they take it out and put on a Band-Aid. "Apparently, prison health care ''sucks''."

* Typically subverted in {{ER}}. There's even an incident in Season 7 where Dr. Kovac tells a technician in a mass shooting scene to stop giving CPR to a victim who suffered a [[BoomHeadshot catastrophic headshot]].

* 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''.

* Averted in the latest version of ''[[AmericasArmy America's Army]]''. You are given an "Individual First Aid Kit" but are made to sit through a lesson which teaches you what treatment to use for each symptom before you're allowed to use it. All are correct battlefield first aid techniques taught by the Army to average soldiers, although the lesson is condensed. However, during a firefight, when a team member goes down, it's often fairly hard to pay attention too long to the symptoms with bullets whizzing by - though one could say that that's the point.

**** Technically, doctors are medics...
**** [[MST3kMantra Quiet, you.]]

[[folder:Tabletop Games]]
* One ''UnknownArmies'' 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 ''[[ButThouMust must]]'' try to get the crash victims out of the vehicles before the [[EveryCarIsAPinto 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}} [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_%282003_season%29#Cell_Phone_Destruction would agree]]), the sheriff [[ButThouMust makes the characters do so anyway]]. [[spoiler:[[JustifiedTrope 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 [[TimeTravelTenseTrouble 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 [[SchrodingersGun better luck or experience rewards]], too.
* In DungeonsAndDragons, 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.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:RealLife]]

** Uh..not so much. Stingrays are venomous and this one hit him in about the one place it could for the venom to be rapidly fatal in a human. Plus, the spike was STILL ATTACHED TO THE VERY MUCH ALIVE AND ANNOYED STINGRAY. They aren't bees who leave their stinger in. They just normally don't hit people square in the chest. It was pretty much the freakiest freak accident that ever freaked.

* ''MyNameIsEarl'': While in prison, Earl gets shivved. They take it out and put on a Band-Aid. "Apparently, prison health care ''sucks''," indeed.
** Considering the nature of the show, this is more likely played for laughs than a real example of this trope.

* Painkillers in ''MaxPayne''.

* Using a shirt or other article of clothing as a makeshift tourniquet to stop bleeding for a gunshot wound. While this allows for the male lead to [[ShirtlessScene show off his mighty torso]], it's a very ''bad'' idea in real life because it deprives the limb in question of the blood it needs to continue functioning. This can lead to necrotic (i.e. dead and rotting) tissue and even gangrene if it's left on too long, at which point amputation is pretty much the only option. In fact, tourniquets are almost exclusively used when the limb is going to be amputated anyway, because they keep blood from spurting out of the newly formed stump (they were pretty much invented for that exact reason). And really, it's doubtful the female lead will be impressed with your abs once your impromptu field doctoring has resulted in her [[NiceJobBreakingItHero losing a leg]].

*In ''Mission Impossible 3,'' Michelle Monaghan [[strike:beats the crap out her patient]] performs multiple precordial chest thumps to restore an asystolic heart. Congratulations, you [[strike:now have a corpse with a broken sternum]] brought him back to life. [[SoYeah
So...Yeah...]][[/folder]]

So... Yeah...]][[/folder]]

*In ''Mission Impossible 3,'' Michelle Monaghan [[strike:beats the crap out her patient]] performs multiple precordial chest thumps to restore an asystolic heart. Congratulations, you [[strike:brought him back to life]] now have a corpse with a broken sternum.
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* In ''{{Looking for Group}}'', Cale receives a blow to the neck during a fight. Richard ignites his wound to stop the jugular from bleeding out. With a fire spell. Granted, it was either that or death.
** The nature of the spell is never stated. For all we know, it may have been a healing spell (although why Dick would even have any healing spells is beyond me; maybe it was some sort of flesh-moulding spell. He's a necromancer, after all).
*** If it was a fire spell, what's to say he didn't just cauterize the wound with it? That's the likely scenario.
**** Because melting shut someone's jugular is such a good idea.
*****It's Richard. CloudCuckooLander extraordinaire.
****** Also, he likes to kill people. [[HeroicSociopath It's kind of his "thing."]]
[[/folder]]

*Depicting professionals doing mouth-to-mouth in modern times. EMTs and hospital staff will always use a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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.