CPR in movies

[Attrage]

Having just watched Flatliners I am reminded of once watching a movie with a friend of mine who is a paramedic, and having him comment to me during a scene in which a character performs CPR how annoyed he got when in every movie and TV show he watches they get CPR so wrong. Y'know the Hollywood version of CPR? They kind of interlace their fingers and do the "one one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand, BREATHE!!" thing, then it inevitably descends into frantic pounding on someone's chest screaming "breathe, goddammit! breathe!!!"
Why is it they always get this so wrong? I mean, is it just because it's more dramatic..? Or has no one in Hollywood ever done first aid training? I mean usually there's a first aid person on the set of every movie, you'd thing they might step in and go, "um, guys? You're kinda doin that wrong."
My paramedic friend actually get's quite ticked off by it, his argument being that if someone out there actually tried the Hollywood way on a real person who had stopped breathing, they'd more than likely do WAY more harm than good.
Any thoughts?

[mavrach]

I'm not surprised to hear that. Also apparently CPR only works a fraction of the time, whereas in movies it almost always works to revive a main character at a suspenseful moment.

[Steve T Power]

It's sort of a "catch all" solution used to provide tension, similar to a defibrillator. Neither is of much use after a person has "died"; CPR is basically used to keep a person stable until help arrives, and defibs are used to prevent cardiac arrest when heartbeat becomes erratic or slowed. In films they're both instant Resurrection techniques. It works to add drama, and I've heard of one story where a defib "seemingly" brought a person back from flatline, but in truth their heartbeat was so weak that it wasn't registering. If they had really already been dead, the defibrillator wouldn't have done a thing. So if that could happen to a friend of mine locally (long story), i'm sure it happens more often than one might think. But by very nature the thing actually STOPS your heart. Fun times.

Also... THIS!

[mkiker2089]

CPR is done wrong in the movies because it's not really important. It's a McGuffin of sorts, or a metaphor perhaps. The "idea" of CPR is the only thing that really matters.

[Attrage]

CPR is done wrong in the movies because it's not really important. It's a McGuffin of sorts, or a metaphor perhaps. The "idea" of CPR is the only thing that really matters.

Yeah I was thinking about it some more and that makes sense, I mean it’s not like every Lethal Weapon-style movie shows the cops typing up incident reports after they discharge their weapons (man, Riggs and Murtagh would have a stack of paperwork after that movie), I just find it odd that a lot of movies get it wrong in the exact same way. Of course, then there’s Ed Harris who can resuscitate someone just by yelling at them really loud… “Fight…fight…fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!!!!”

[Kenneth Morgan]

This is from TV, but I remember that, for a while, episodes of "Emergency!" would feature a special disclaimer at the end stressing to viewers that you can't learn CPR by watching a TV show. Instead, you should receive proper training from a qualified professional. Given that "Emergency!" usually went out of its way to present realistic situations and practices, I thought this carried a fair amount of weight.

[mkiker2089]

CPR is done wrong in the movies because it's not really important. It's a McGuffin of sorts, or a metaphor perhaps. The "idea" of CPR is the only thing that really matters.

Yeah I was thinking about it some more and that makes sense, I mean it’s not like every Lethal Weapon-style movie shows the cops typing up incident reports after they discharge their weapons (man, Riggs and Murtagh would have a stack of paperwork after that movie), I just find it odd that a lot of movies get it wrong in the exact same way. Of course, then there’s Ed Harris who can resuscitate someone just by yelling at them really loud… “Fight…fight…fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight!!!!”

They all do it similarly I think because a precedence that works is often copied. They all seem to shorten it, increase greatly the odds that it will work, and generally add more panic to it. In reality CPR is panic inducing but it's internal panic. It either works or it doesn't. yelling, slapping etc.. are not practiced but by making CPR more dramatic it actually shows the spirit of it better. Next time your friend gets anal explain to them that having a calm and organized CPR scene would actually trivialize it more than it would portray reality.

I hear similar complaints about House from people in the medical community. I think they need to relax and realize that TV isn't supposed to be real, it's supposed to entertain. As you said, not everything is represented and much is truncated.

[mavrach]

It's usually just bad writing. Whether it's CPR, a guy about to fall off a cliff but hanging by his fingertips, somebody about to be killed before being saved by someone from offscreen, it's just a cheap device to create suspense, and after the 1000th time of seeing the same this it doesn't work anymore. When a writer is creating another "is he going to die?" moment, if they're sinking to that point, they're certainly not going to research proper medical procedure.