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Tara Parker-Pope talks about how fictional doctors see more high adrenaline events than real life doctors do.

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Medical shows have long been a staple of prime time television. But how well do they reflect what really happens at the hospital?

That's the question tackled in the current issue of Stanford Medicine Magazine, a publication of the university's medical school. Many doctors are hooked on TV medical dramas, according to the magazine, but they have a "love-hate relationship" with their television counterparts.

Often the doctors aren't concerned about the technical details of such popular shows as "Grey's Anatomy" and "ER." Instead, many take issue with the day-to-day goings-on and the misimpression that medical professionals have lots of time to socialize and kindle hospital romances.

Kathy Reagan, manager of Stanford's emergency medicine residency program, confesses that she is a "Grey's Anatomy" fanatic but finds the scheduling of make-believe doctors particularly unrealistic. Real doctors arrive in shifts, often at odd hours in the early morning or late at night. On TV, doctors show up at the same time and somehow find time to lunch together during the day. And they always find a parking space close to the hospital entrance. "Only in a fairy tale!" Ms. Reagan said.

"I enjoy these shows because they are so unrealistic that I don't feel like I am at work," said Dr. Suzanne Miller, a recent Stanford emergency medicine resident who is starting a practice in Washington, D.C.

Fictional doctors also see more "high-adrenaline" cases than most real doctors see in their entire careers, the magazine notes, and in those episodes C.P.R. often is inaccurately portrayed. In 1996, an article in The New England Journal of Medicine noted that while on TV most patients survive after C.P.R., in reality C.P.R. saves lives just five percent of the time. In addition, TV doctors and nurses often don't perform the technique correctly, according to Stanford Medicine.

Still, Dr. Miller recalls that she once asked a patient's brother how he learned to do C.P.R. "He said he saw it on 'ER'," she told the magazine. "He said that's how they did it on the show - and he saved his brother's life, so that's pretty darn good."

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At Real Hospitals, Less Trauma...and Drama

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Medical shows have long been a staple of prime time television. But how well do they reflect what really happens at the hospital? That's the question tackled in the current issue of Stanford Medicine Magazine, a publication of the university's medical school.

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Dr. Stamp talks about how interns never do surgery alone in real life.

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Dr Stamp talks more about Izzy and her situation of cutting the LVAD wire.

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How all different kinda of events that take place in the show don't take place in real life.

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My friends who aren't in medical school often ask me, "Is it just like Grey's Anatomy?" I admit, I am a huge fan of this medical drama. Some aspects of resident life are similar to what's depicted on the show, but others are nothing like it. Here's a side-by-side comparison:

Grey's Anatomy: The attendings and residents regularly hook up with and/or marry each other.

Real Life: It would be pretty scandalous if an attending and a resident got together. I'm not sure I've ever heard of it happening (which means it either doesn't happen a lot, or when it does it's hush-hush).

***

Grey's Anatomy: Surgeons get into really intense, close relationships with patients regularly.

Real Life: It is a rare surgeon that will take the time out of his/her busy schedule to get to know patients so personally. And the whole falling in love with patients thing - that really never happens.

***

Grey's Anatomy: Doctors discuss inane details of their personal lives as the patient lies asleep on the table during surgery.

Real Life: This occurs very frequently.

***

Grey's Anatomy: The residents are constantly competing for surgeries and trying to outdo each other.

Real Life: In reality, residents are colleagues and friends, rely on each other, and work together.

***

Grey's Anatomy: Residents get screamed at for making a mistake in the Operating Room.

Real Life: Depends on the attending, but yes, this does actually happen. It can be uncomfortable.

***

Grey's Anatomy: Residents and attendings have time in the middle of the day to sit down in the cafeteria and eat a leisurely lunch.

Real Life: No way do the residents have this kind of time. Lunch is usually a granola bar on the run, if there's a spare moment.

***

What else have you seen on medical dramas that you've always wondered about?

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My friends who aren't in medical school often ask me, "Is it just like Grey's Anatomy?" I admit, I am a huge fan of this medical drama. Some aspects of resident life are similar to what's depicted on the show, but others are nothing like it.

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5 reasons why Seattle Grace Hospital is not a real hospital.

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Marc Siegel talks about what would really happen to a Doctor if they messed with a clinical trial

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The premise
Neurosurgeons at Seattle Grace Hospital are conducting a clinical trial of a new treatment for patients with "rapidly progressive Alzheimer's disease." Some of the patients in the trial are randomly assigned to receive the experimental drug and others are given a placebo. The patients don't know which group they are in, but the doctors find out when they unseal an envelope in the operating room just before inserting the syringe into the patient's brain. Dr. Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo), the surgical resident who is coordinating the trial, is anxious to enroll Adele Webber (Loretta Devine), the wife of Seattle Grace's chief of surgery, Dr. Richard Webber (James Pickens Jr.). Adele has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, and she is becoming more confused. Among other problems, she mistakes Meredith for her dead mother and accuses her of having an affair with Richard. To avoid the risk that Adele will get the placebo, Meredith suggests to Dr. Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey), the neurosurgeon running the trial, that they give her the experimental drug outside the study protocol. But Derek objects on the grounds that it would ruin the trial and "our careers along with it." Despite this warning, Meredith sneaks into the hospital's pharmacy and unseals the envelope for the next patient in the trial. After discovering that Adele is slated to get the placebo, she switches the papers with those in another envelope that instructs doctors to give the drug.

The medical questions

Is rapidly progressive Alzheimer's disease a real condition? Are clinical trials run this way in the real world? Is there a similar type of drug currently under investigation? Would a staff doctor's wife be allowed to participate in a clinical trial at a medical center? Would a doctor who interfered with a trial the way Meredith did get caught, and if so, under what circumstances would her deception come to light? What would be the consequences if her actions were discovered?

The reality

The idea that surgeons would be concerned about rapidly progressive Alzheimer's disease is far-fetched to begin with, says Dr. Bruce L. Miller, director of the Memory & Aging Center at UC San Francisco. There are rapidly progressive dementias like prion disorders (including mad cow disease), "but rapid AD just isn't a concept that our field thinks about," he says.

Clinical trials are designed and conducted with great care to ensure valid results that are free of bias, says Joshua Grill, director of the Katherine and Benjamin Kagan Alzheimer's Disease Treatment Development Program at UCLA. According to Grill, proper randomization of patients and making sure they don't know whether they got the drug or the placebo are crucial to preventing bias. Although Meredith acted out of a desire to help a patient, her behavior jeopardized the study by introducing bias and is a case of "scientific misconduct," he says.

Grill says the clinical trial depicted on the show is very similar to an actual multi-center trial that he and other UCLA researchers are participating in as part of the Alzheimer's Disease Cooperative Study. The real study, which relies on decades of research, is testing a virus that has been genetically engineered to stimulate production of a chemical to enhance nerve growth, which could help protect the neurons that are damaged by Alzheimer's. The treatment is delivered directly into the brain in a method similar to the one portrayed in the show.

In both the fictional and the real trial, the small number of surgeons and their teams who do the injections are aware of who gets the treatment and who gets the placebo. That way, if there is a complication during the surgery, the team is prepared to deal with it. Also, the operation for those in the placebo group is less extensive.

But there is a crucial difference between the real world and the TV version. In the real trial, Grill says, the doctors who administer the injections aren't involved in assessing whether the treatment worked. Those assessments are made by doctors who don't know which patients got the drug, so that their clinical judgment isn't influenced - even subconsciously - by the knowledge that a patient did or didn't receive the treatment, he says.

Faculty members and their partners or children would be allowed to participate in clinical trials at their home medical school, Miller adds.

Scientific misconduct can happen - and has happened - in major academic centers, says Dr. Antonio DeSalles, a professor of neurosurgery at UCLA who has studied this phenomenon. When it is discovered, he says, the culprit usually is caught by one of the collaborators who feels betrayed and refuses to participate in the deception. According to DeSalles, when caught, the culprit usually loses his or her job.

Miller points out that in most clinical trials in the U.S., it is not only illegal but "just about impossible" for researchers to tamper with the information that reveals whether a patient will get the drug or the placebo. Unlike the TV rendition, in the real world, control of the study and the drug lies not with the investigators but with the pharmaceutical company or a pharmacist at the hospital, where the drug (or placebo) is identified with a code number. A physician such as Meredith who tampers with a blind study would definitely risk loss of her license or spend time in jail if caught, he says.

Siegel is an associate professor of medicine at New York University Langone Medical Center. His new book is "The Inner Pulse: Unlocking the Secret Code for Sickness and Health."

marc@doctorsiegel.com

'Grey's Anatomy'

9 p.m. April 28, ABC

Episode: "It's a Long Way Back"

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The Unreal World: 'Grey's Anatomy' episode depicts unlikely tampering with Alzheimer's study

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The premise Neurosurgeons at Seattle Grace Hospital are conducting a clinical trial of a new treatment for patients with "rapidly progressive Alzheimer's disease." Some of the patients in the trial are randomly assigned to receive the experimental drug and others are given a placebo.

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Grey's Anatomy situations vs. real life situations told by Amanda Kirzner

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Grey Matters

Amanda Kirzner, DO, MPH, says real-world residency is nothing like its thrill-a-minute depiction on "Grey's Anatomy."

"Grey's Anatomy" has been one of my favorite TV shows since its inception in 2005. Back then I was a premed, so I watched the drama about the lives of surgical residents and physicians with great interest, even though I knew many aspects of the residents' lives were exaggerated or just plain incorrect. When I became a general surgery intern myself last year, these discrepancies became even more obvious to me.

I understand that "Grey's Anatomy's" producers have to sometimes sacrifice realism to engage their audience and garner ratings. But I dislike the way the show overglamorizes the lives of the residents and often presents false medical information. By portraying the residents' lives as exciting, dramatic whirlwinds, the show makes real-world residency seem less difficult. I would not be surprised if medical students watching the show are shocked and disillusioned when they finally rotate through surgery and find out what the surgical world is really like. I certainly was surprised.

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During my intern year, my biggest pet peeve was watching the interns on the show go into the operating room for big, complicated cases such as brain surgery every day. Typically, interns on a surgical service take care of the patients on the floor. They rarely see the inside of the OR, and when they do, it's usually to assist with an emergency or a run-of-the-mill case.

Surgical interns do a lot of scut work, such as drawing stat labs, putting in orders for nurses, talking to patients' families, rounding with social workers to discuss patient placement upon discharge, accompanying patients to tests, and obtaining patients' signatures on consent-to-surgery forms. Second-year residents (at least in my program, and it does vary) typically see consults. On the show, the interns appear to have bypassed the floor work and consult stages and function like chief residents in the OR, which is highly unrealistic.

Mistakes on 'Grey's Anatomy'

And while they are rocking the OR, "Grey's" interns and residents make embarrassingly egregious mistakes. Errant residents on the show are lightly punished for offenses that would get them kicked out of any actual residency program. For example, Izzie cuts a wire on her love interest Denny's left ventricular assist device to make him sicker so that he would be moved up the transplant list. She was reprimanded but allowed to continue her residency. A real-life resident would not only be removed from the program and likely sued, but also unable to practice medicine ever again, with the chance of jail time. Furthermore, physicians are never allowed to become romantically involved with their patients.

I also see interns and residents on the show committing command-chain faux pas that would be frowned upon, or not permitted, in real hospitals. In most surgery residency programs, junior residents report to the senior residents, who in turn report to the attending physicians. Yet "Grey's Anatomy" makes no distinction of resident seniority.

As an intern, I did not run to an attending before speaking to a senior resident as interns regularly do on the show. An intern who bypasses a chief to bring important patient information to an attending would irritate both the chief and the attending.

The schedules of the show's residents are very unusual compared with the schedules of nonfictional surgical residents. Trainees at real-world hospitals won't find themselves assigned to brain surgery one day, pediatric surgery the next day and plastic surgery the day after that. Surgical residents usually are assigned to a particular service for a set amount of time, often a month. Scheduling is not a free-for-all as fans of "Grey's Anatomy" are led to believe. Residents do not arrive in the morning and pick their service based on which attending has the best cases that day (or which attending they are having a secret affair with).

Moreover, general surgery residents do not typically rotate through orthopedics or neurosurgery as they do on "Grey's Anatomy." Those specialties have their own residencies. Once new physicians match into a general surgery residency, orthopedics and neurosurgery are not options for them unless they want to switch residency programs.

Where's the tape?

While some of the misrepresentations on "Grey's Anatomy" are understandable-after all, the show's purpose is to entertain-the medical errors on the show are just astounding. A recurring error on the show that really irks me has to do with intubation. During surgeries on "Grey's Anatomy," viewers often see a close-up of an intubated patient's face. And 99% of the time, the endotracheal tube is not held in place with tape. In real life, we always use tape because the tube can easily slip from its correct position. If that were to happen, the patient could go into respiratory distress and die because of the powerful anesthetics in his or her system. These anesthetics paralyze the muscles that help you breathe, so patients taking them are temporarily unable to breathe on their own.

Also, I have never seen surgical patients with their eyes taped shut on the show. If patients' eyes are not taped shut during surgery, they can get corneal abrasions. This is the standard of care. I have actually written to the show to tell the producers that if they are going to zoom in on a patient's face, they should make the depiction as realistic as possible. A little tape can go a long way in the OR. I never received a response to my letter, but I know that the show's writers consult with physicians, so I cannot understand why there are so many medical misrepresentations on the show.

Despite the unrealistic nature of "Grey's Anatomy," it is still one of my favorites. I have watched every single episode for 10 seasons. I enjoy the exhilarating, dramatic lives of the characters on the show, and I sometimes wish I were doing my residency in the fantasyland of Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital.

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'Grey's Anatomy' vs. real-life residency: You already know how this turns out - The DO

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Grey Matters "Grey's Anatomy" has been one of my favorite TV shows since its inception in 2005. Back then I was a premed, so I watched the drama about the lives of surgical residents and physicians with great interest, even though I knew many aspects of the residents' lives were exaggerated or just plain incorrect.

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In the Midnight Hour. This is the episode when the interns operate on their co-worker, Sadie

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Edit

Summaries

The interns ask for help from Cristina and Meredith when their back room "study group" has a set back while Izzie continues to wrestle things in her mind by herself. Patients include a father of a teenager who refuses to sleep because she doesn't feel safe and a hypochondriac whose prognosis is not as bad as she feared, but the proposed cure is worse.

Sadie manipulates the interns into performing a procedure that goes horribly wrong, Izzie's ghost refuses to leave, and Mark bonds with a girl who's taken responsibility for her sleep-walking father.

Spoilers

The synopsis below may give away important plot points.

Synopsis

Wise, voice-over Meredith started the night by talking about being scared of the dark. As an adult, it's when self-doubt (accompanied by an image of Cristina struggling through surgery), loneliness (see: Callie laying on the floor with a blank stare and a bloody nose) and regret (Lexie hugging her knees to her chest) kick in.

Izzie told herself she was crazy for believing she was really seeing and feeling Denny. The only way to test whether what she was seeing and feeling was real, Denny said, was to do something they never had a chance to do in real life. Then they did the deed -- beyond-the-grave style.

Meredith, sitting on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night while reading her mom's diaries, told her friend, Sadie, she was learning all kinds of new things about her mom. Meredith thought she would have liked her mom if she hadn't been her child. Sadie asked Meredith being her "new intern BFF," and Meredith said she didn't see it because Lexie was raised right with pictures of smiley faces on her walls.

Meredith heard sounds of, umm, orgasmic delight coming from Izzie's room, but when she saw Alex in the hall she wondered who was in the room with Izzie. "Derek?!" she shouted. But he came stumbling over from the other end of the hall. "Who's making a porno movie in Izzie's room?" Derek asked. Alex said "she's flying solo" and said it's kind of hot. Izzie, sweating and "hot and cold," told Alex she was skipping work.

At the hospital, the resident were doing their best to impress Bailey as they jockeyed for position on the coveted solo surgery, which was an appendectomy. (Remember that, folks).

Lexie and the interns were huddled around another one of the interns, who was laying on a gurney as the interns were flicking various parts of his body. They'd given him an epidural. He peed himself. Sadie came in to find this situation playing out and told Lexie that Meredith (or "Dith," as she put it) was wrong about Lexie. "She said you were a priss," Sadie said. Sadie said it was too bad the intern wasn't pregnant, because they could give him a C-section. Lexie suggested they take out his appendix. Seriously. He didn't agree to it, but Sadie said, "do me ... as long as I get to do one of you guys next." Lexie agreed.

Callie and Sloan went to treat a patient who'd injured himself by falling a couple of stories while sleepwalking. When they tried to treat him, he went into a rage that included swinging his elbow, hitting Callie, giving her a bloody nose as she fell to the floor.

The interns decided on an outpatient surgery room for their appendix operation. Alex went to treat a patient with abdominal pain. Sloan decided to fix Callie's broken nose.

The sleepwalker apologized to his daughter for scaring her with his episode and said he must have forgotten to take one of his pulls. Derek found Sloan in the supply closet with Lexie, who was gathering supplies for her secret surgery. Sloan had to convince Derek that he found Lexie in the supply closet and did not invite her there.

Lexie was about to begin performing the appendectomy on Sadie when she stopped and decided it was a bad idea. She had just about decided not to do it when Sadie took the scalpel herself and sliced her own abdomen open, telling Lexie to take out her appendix.

Lexie and the interns discovered Sadie's appendix was inflamed, which made it more than a routine procedure. One of the interns decided she couldn't handle it and left.

The daughter of the sleepwalker couldn't sleep and was evasive about how long it had been since the last tie she'd put her dad back to sleep.

Alex's abdominal pain patient, whose husband believed she was a hypochondriac, admitted she'd ordered antibiotics online to kill what she thought was a staph infection (her husband and dermatologist said it was a pimple). Alex told she'd killed all the healthy bacteria in her body, so the doctors would have to introduce new healthy bacteria with a fecal transplant, from someone with whom she shared everyday germs -- preferably a spouse. Her husband refused to "poop into a bowl" until his wife admitted the staph infection was a pimple. She wouldn't do it.

Cristina couldn't find any of the interns and the one who'd left Sadie's appendectomy claimed she didn't know where the other interns were. Lexie, out of breath, asked Meredith if she had a second. Cristina found the epidural intern and told him to get to work, and he refused -- because he couldn't move.

Izzie and Denny laid in bed together, with Izzie resting her head on Denny's chest. She didn't want to move or open her eyes for fear that it would all be over.

Back at the hospital, one intern stood over Sadie, who was now unconscious, as Cristina and Meredith walked in. "I think she's dying," the intern said.

Meredith told an intern to page the chief and to get Bailey and "not to say anything else" while Cristina took the lead in trying to save Sadie.

Sloan told Derek he'd "never thought about Little Grey in that way until you told me not to." Sloan said Derek planted the seed, and Derek told him to unplant it.

Alex tried to mediate between the husband and wife about the pimple/staph infection. The wife told the husband she believed that he believed it was a pimple, and that was the best she could do. He left the room but came back when Alex told him, "She's telling you what's real for her. Stop walking away."

The daughter of the sleepwalker explained to the doctors that her dad was sleepwalking every night. She thought stress was making him sleepwalk and she was the cause of the stress, so she tried to take care of him every night. The doctors said her father could have epilepsy, which would explain the sleepwalking.

Izzie woke up with her arm on her pillow and Denny was nowhere to be found. She called for him in a panic until she found him. She yelled at him as he tried to apologize for dying.

Bailey went into the outpatient surgery room where Cristina and Meredith were operating on Sadie and talked Cristina through the process -- a solo appendectomy.

The interns sat in the hallway wondering if they were going to go to jail for what they'd done. George asked Lexie what was going on and said he could have tried to stop to stop her. She said it wasn't about him. "This is the one thing I've done in the past few months that wasn't about getting you to notice me," she told him. Another intern told George that Lexie was in love with him and asked how he could've missed that.

The chief praised Meredith and Cristina for handling the Sadie situation well by taking charge and asking for help at the same time. Lexie stormed into the room and admitted it was all her fault and that Cristina had told them to "shut it down" a day earlier. The chief asked if Cristina knew about it and before she could respond he asked Meredith if she knew, and Meredith said no. In another room, Cristina and Meredith went at each other about who failed to protect whom and Cristina told Meredith she should have said anything to protect Cristina in front of the chief.

The residents all waited for Bailey to find out what she was going to say to the interns. She told them she wasn't going to say anything to the interns and they were going to have to make their own speeches to the interns. The residents -- Cristina, Meredith, George and Alex -- brought their interns into Sadie's room and had them explain what her what they'd done wrong. They told the interns they were all on probation, they'd lost the chief's respect, which George said was difficult to get back. Alex, speaking for himself, said they'd lost his respect and would likely never get it back. That's when one intern muttered, "But he still respects Izzie Stevens." Alex pushed the intern against a wall and said, "She was trying to save a man's life, and you almost killed a friend for fun -- it's different." Alex looked up and saw Izzie in the doorway.

Bailey and Callie talked about what the interns had done, and Bailey said she remembered being so eager to perform a surgery. She said she now does most of her surgeries without even thinking about it. She wondered if she needed a new challenge -- something to make her as excited as the residents were about performing a simply appendectomy. "Maybe I'm just tired," Bailey said. Callie said she was tired, too.

Meredith, speaking to Sadie as her boss, said what she'd done made her seriously wonder whether Sadie had what it took to be a good doctor. Speaking to Sadie as a friend, she simply asked, "What the hell is going on with you?" Sadie said she didn't know.

Sloan told Derek to take Lexie home as she sat, lonely and full of regret, at the hospital.

Hunt was sitting at Cristina's doorstep, across the street from the hospital, when she came home. He said he didn't know why he was there. She asked if he wanted to come in and he said no. They sat on her doorstep together and he told her he thought she was beautiful.

Izzie apologized to Alex for being "a mess," but he told her she'd have to break up with him if she didn't want him around, because he wasn't going anywhere. Alex invited Izzie into his room and she followed. Denny, standing in the doorway of Izzie's room, watched her go into Alex's room. She told Denny she was sorry, and he said he'd be waiting for her.

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"Grey's Anatomy" In the Midnight Hour (TV Episode 2008)

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Edit Summaries The interns ask for help from Cristina and Meredith when their back room "study group" has a set back while Izzie continues to wrestle things in her mind by herself. Patients include a father of a teenager who refuses to sleep because she doesn't feel safe and a hypochondriac whose prognosis is not as bad as she feared, but the proposed cure is worse.

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Christina Heiser talking about the most analyzed and ranked episodes in Grey's Anatomy

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When we watch Grey's Anatomy, the last thing we're looking to see is a realistic portrayal of the health-care industry. We relish the dark and twisty turns the show takes when it comes to our favorite couples (Meredith and Derek! Cristina and Owen! Callie and Arizona!) and the patients in the emergency room.

Over the past 11 years (and more than 200 episodes), show creator Shonda Rhimes has told some incredibly tear-jerking-and plenty of WTF-stories. But could any of these scenarios actually happen to, you know, real people?
RELATED: 12 Times We Almost Quit Watching Grey's Anatomy
"They have a sprinkling of real medicine [on the show]," says Darria Gillespie, M.D., assistant professor in the department of emergency medicine at Emory University School of Medicine and executive vice president of Sharecare. "The reality is, we see crazy things in the ER. And so in some of the cases, they're able to pull from reality, and others are kind of a stretch and a dramatization of them. But that's the craziness and beauty of the ER-you never know what you're going to see."

Here are some of the over-the-top cases that had us glued to our TVs, ranked from least cuckoo to most:

8. The Woman Who Had a 70-Pound Tumor (Season 1)
That's right-70 freakin' pounds. The character died after a 14-hour surgery. "That's not impossible, especially in some malignancies like ovarian cancer," says Gillespie. "Part of the problem with ovarian [cancer] is that [a tumor] can grow for a long time without somebody noticing-they may just feel bloated. And if you have someone who's obese, then yes, it's possible. This one is so not far from the truth." In fact, in 2013, the Huffington Post reported that a 556-pound man in Oregon had a 70-pound tumor in his abdomen.

7. The Divorced Couple Who Got Stuck Together During Sex (Season 3)
Her IUD caught on his penis piercing. Oh, and Addison Montgomery (McDreamy's ex-wife, in case you've forgotten) just so happened to announce this in front of the couple's daughter-making this one painful on so many levels. "An IUD has a string on it, which is how you retrieve it when you want to take it out," says Gillespie, who notes that while yes, theoretically something like this could occur, she's never seen it. "As you can imagine, a piercing could somehow get stuck onto that string of the IUD."

6. The Guy Who Had Parasites in His Brain (Season 5)
Archer, Addison's brother, started having seizures on an episode of Private Practice, the Grey's Anatomy spinoff show. In a crossover episode of Grey's, they learned that his seizures were being caused by parasites, and not a tumor, in his brain. Luckily, McDreamy figured out a way operate on his ex-wife's brother succesfully. Believe it or not, this is something that can actually happen, though it mostly occurs in the developing world. The condition is called cysticercosis -it's the most common parasitic infection-and it's caused by eating food (usually pork) contaminated with the tapeworm Taenia solium. "If you eat infected tapeworn eggs, those eggs hatch, and then they migrate to various parts of your body including your brain," says Gillespie.
RELATED: A Doctor Explains How a Woman Can Go Nine Months Without Knowing She's Pregnant
5. The Baby Whose Bones Broke Right After Birth (Season 11)
During an ultrasound, it was revealed that doctor couple April and Jackson's fetus had osteogenesis imperfecta, a.k.a. brittle bone disease. Their baby boy ended up dying shortly after the birth. This is a real (although rare) medical condition-and Sarah Drew, the actress who plays April, pitched the idea for the storyline because it happened to a family friend. "It's hearbreaking," says Gillespie. "The bones break with little or no trauma, so just swaddling your child or chaning a diaper can lead to fractures." While the mild form of the disease doesn't affect life expectancy, the most severe form, Type II, is usually lethal soon after birth.

4. The Man Who Shot Eight Nails into His Head (Season 1)
He fell down the stairs with a nail gun, and while he was being operated on, doctors found out he also had a tumor in his brain. Miraculously, he survived the episode. "Eight is a stretch," says Gillespie, "but I have seen people who've shot themselves in the head with a nail gun. I had one patient who accidently shot himself in the head with a nail, came to the ER, and just had a tiny abrasion on his scalp. He said he had fallen and was worried that he may have shot a nail into his head, and lo and behold, he had a five-inch nail in his brain. The nail was literally through the scalp-you couldn't see it."

3. The Two Random Strangers Who Got Impaled by a Pole (Season 2)
They were in a train crash-and while the man, Tom, told doctors to save the woman, Bonnie, since she was younger and newly engaged, she ended up dying while he lived. Again, this is something that could theoretically happen, but the fact that this was such a massively-sized pole makes the situation pretty darn improbable. "The chances of it not hitting [vital] blood vessels is fairly low," says Gillespie. "It would have to hit the right place [in the body], and I think the chance would be extremely slim."
RELATED: This Woman Says She Ended Up in a Wheelchair After Using Her Friend's Makeup Brush
2. The Teenager Who Was Encased in Cement (Season 4)
His friends dared him to lie in a vat of cement, which hardened around his body and then started poisoning his organs and burning his skin. He lived after Cristina Yang performed a controversial heart surgery on him. From a medical standpoint, this is very, very unlikely, says Gillespie. "You'd have to be lying in there for a really long time, since cement takes around one to two days to harden," she says.

1. The Man Who Had a Fish Swim into His Penis (Season 3)
The chairman of Seattle Grace Hospital, Larry, got admitted to the hospital with swollen testicles after a rare fish swam up his penis while he peed in the Amazon River. Um, what? The fish is called Candiru, and according to legend, it has the ability to jump into your urethra while urinating, says Gillespie. (A guy who swears this happened to him was featured on Animal Planet.) However, it's never been proven to actually be possible. "There have been many anecdotes but no truly document cases," says Gillespie. "People talk about it a lot, but it's never been in medical literature."
Gif courtesy of giphy.com

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Grey's Anatomy's Most WTF Medical Cases-Analyzed and Ranked

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When we watch Grey's Anatomy, the last thing we're looking to see is a realistic portrayal of the health-care industry. We relish the dark and twisty turns the show takes when it comes to our favorite couples (Meredith and Derek! Cristina and Owen! Callie and Arizona!) and the patients in the emergency room.

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Dr. Stamp talking about all of the nonfictional events that take place in Grey's Anatomy

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I never really watched medical shows, even before and during medical school. I watched maybe one season of ER, a couple of seasons of Grey's Anatomy and House MD and maybe one episode each of Private Practice, Chicago Hope, Emily Owens MD and other random medical shows. The only medical show I made an exception for was Scrubs, because it was funny and poignant and the closest to replicating what life is actually like in a hospital (but still a long shot I'm afraid!). Oh, and I want to be able to whistle like Dr. Cox.

I'm sure like every profession, seeing your own profession on the big or little screen is generally frustrating because of the gross misrepresentation of your profession, daily life or working environment. Hollywood likes to play fast and loose with facts and science. Entertainment is great and all but that doesn't stop me from yelling at the television: "That's not real!" So I thought I would compile a list of some of my favorite fictional faux pas.

House MD: You just cannot be addicted to painkillers and still employed. I feel pretty confident to say that if a patient upsets you and you insult them, even humorously and with a razor-sharp wit, you would be in a lot of trouble. Same goes for your colleagues. The medical profession takes substance abuse pretty seriously, and Gregory House would have been parked in rehabilitation and his services declined with his opiate addiction. Brilliant as he may be, anyone with such a serious problem would be directed to the appropriate services. And, by the way, House, it's not lupus. It's never lupus.

House MD (again): Doctors don't do every single kind of procedure themselves, or even at all! Oh wow, this one grinds my gears. After breaking into a patient's house to confirm that they have been lying to you, you take the samples of mould found in the air conditioning vent to the lab where you run a host of tests to tell you all you need to know and save the day. I should mention that this was a follow-up procedure to you individually performing a patient's gastroscopy, brain biopsy, and MRI. Does not work like that. We specialize. We outsource to experts. You just cannot be abreast of all of these procedures. It would be like me performing heart surgery and then popping to theater next door to deliver a baby or administer an anesthetic.

Every medical show or movie ever: Everyone who has a cardiac arrest gets a minute of (sub-par) CPR and a shock and then coughs and wakes up. This one upsets me the most because when it really happens, it's not a happy ending. It's really sad explaining to families that we did CPR but things didn't work out. Or that not everyone's heart can be restarted (or should be) with a shock called a defibrillation. The survival for an out of hospital cardiac arrest is around 10 percent. However, I hope that seeing CPR on TV or at the movies encourages people to learn CPR. It may very well save a life. I'm also thrilled to see so many places now having automated defibrillators. It may give a few people a real chance of making it.

Grey's Anatomy: Interns do not do surgery alone. Even if they are getting it on with McDreamy. Interns are doctors in their first year out of medical school. I remember my intern year so well - it was scary and exciting and so fascinating. I learned so much and got to do so much. I learned to put in chest drains, arterial lines, do lumbar punctures and ascitic taps (read: nerdy surgical intern). However, the consultant neurosurgeon or cardiothoracic surgeon is not going to give you the suture or scalpel and say 'go for it!'. Nor are you ever likely to be put in that situation in the first place. Medicine is a skill to be learned over a period of time, and we all have to take it one step at a time. Maybe it wasn't Meredith and McDreamy hooking up that promoted her, he probably just couldn't stand her pouting if he said no?

Every medical show or movie ever: There is no McDreamy (or equivalent). True story - when I graduated medical school, my grandmother, ever the feminist, said, "Well now you can meet a nice doctor and get married and have kids!" I am a nice doctor! Besides, going to medical school is a very extreme form of husband hunting! I hate to say it too, but doctors are a great big bunch of nerds. We don't swan in with our designer stubble and perfect hair or make-up. My make-up is generally found on the inside of my surgical mask so, at the end of the day, I'm more McYuck than McStreamy. Doctors may scrub up all right but by and large, work is work and scrubs look good on nobody. Sorry. On the upside, the constant time indoors means we have lovely skin. Winning!

Grey's Anatomy: Cutting your LVAD patient's drive line will not bump him up the transplant list. Just won't. It will get you deregistered and probably kill the patient a lot faster than you will ever find a heart. Sorry, Izzie. Transplant is a highly regulated and very sacred process, and we are not about to screw it up like that. Actually, that kind of thing would probably get you arrested, not fast asleep in your prom gown with your friends looking after you.

Every medical show or TV show ever: Random old school x-rays. These days, we mostly use computers to look at x-rays or CT scans. But why is there, always some random, usually chest x-ray, which bears no relation to the 'patient' hanging up in the background? You don't just leave x-rays lying around a hospital, they'll vanish never to be seen again. And, by the way, Betty from Mad Men. Your chest x-ray was pretty darn good for someone with terminal lung cancer.

Pulp Fiction: Stabbing someone with adrenaline in the heart will not cure their OD. I feel like I'm telling a whole bunch of kids that Santa is well, you know. And if John Travolta stabbing Uma Thurman in the heart isn't one of the best damn scenes ever, well I don't know what is. But let me reassure you, that will not work. Now, in cardiac surgery, I have given intracardiac adrenaline before, but that is with and open chest, where I can directly see the heart and when things are not going very well at all. But that is pretty uncommonly used really. Plus, a needle into someone's heart can make the heart bleed, and the bleeding squashes the heart causing a condition called cardiac tamponade. So in reality, about an hour or two later, Uma's heart would have stopped and Marcellus Wallace would have been seriously unimpressed.

Every movie or TV show ever: If you are in a coma, you need a breathing tube, not a little bit of oxygen up your nose. This really grates me. If you are in a coma, you generally cannot breath for yourself. So we put a tube down your throat and breathe for you. Nasal prongs are so seriously pointless and downright negligent. I get it though; the marvelously attractive actor would not look so nice with a piece of plastic down their mouth.

Every movie or TV show ever: "Flatlining" is not called flatlining, it is called asystole. And it cannot be fixed with a shock. Flatlining is one of those funny lay terms that if you hear being shouted in a hospital, you should turn the TV down. A flat line on a monitor means the monitor is disconnected, or the patient has asystole where the heart has no electrical or mechanical activity at all. Unfortunately, this cannot be fixed by a defibrillator shock.

Rant over.

I'm going to start watching legal shows.
Nikki Stamp is a cardiothoracic surgeon in Australia who blogs at Advice for and from the heart. Image credit: s_bukley / Shutterstock.com

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The problem with medical TV shows. A surgeon sets the record straight.

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I never really watched medical shows, even before and during medical school. I watched maybe one season of ER, a couple of seasons of Grey's Anatomy and House MD and maybe one episode each of Private Practice, Chicago Hope, Emily Owens MD and other random medical shows.

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Scene when the pole went into Bonnie and Tom after the train crash.

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"Into You Like A Train" Meredith temporarily forgets her worries about Derek's decision when a train crash results in dozens of injuries. Later, Addison sees potential in Izzie, but Izzie is forced to choose between her friendship with Meredith or her career, on "Grey's Anatomy," SUNDAY, OCTOBER 30 (10:00-11:01 p.m., ET) on the ABC Television Network.

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Izzy cutting her patients LVAD wire

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Derek and Meredith loving each other before she pampered with the Alzheimers trail.

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Amelia going into her big surgery pretending to be superwomen.