I should preface this review, the first I've ever written, by saying I have only watched the first episode, Season 1 Episode 1. I would also like to say that it was that bad that I felt compelled to look the show up to see if they actually made more episodes and then saw the rating and became so confused...how have so many people given this 10 stars?

I work in healthcare and whilst I understand this is acting, I have never seen a show do so poorly with the medical aspect of the medical drama. One of my major gripes was the two blood samples taken - one where the needle was left to hang, then removed without releasing the tourniquet which, in reality would have meant blood went everywhere (don't even get me started on how much the needle was being moved around...if someone took my blood like that, well, they wouldn't be succesful and I also would have gone crazy at them), and one done with a syringe WITHOUT consent, and taken from the deltoid, that muscle at the top of your arm that you get vaccinations in. The second blood sample, in reality, would never happen. I thought she was giving an intramuscular injection, and had she been it would have been pretty spot on. But you can't draw blood from there. Plus there was no tourniquet, no swab to stop the bleeding once the needle is removed...and no vein to bleed in the first place. As for the trauma scene - you have a patient with a stab wound to the abdomen deteriorating and you stand there asking where the neurosurgeon and orthopaedic surgeons are going instead of calling the trauma or general surgeons?! And then when the patient "crashes" and the monotone flatline sounds no one does CPR? No compressions, the nurse who was told to bag the patient made snales look like speedy animals and medically no one did anything right. Did they have a medical advisor for the show? If they did I see why they're working in TV and not in a hospital. But this leads nicely to my main issue. The doctor running the trauma, Dr Decker, was out of his depth and not a single member of the team in the room supported him. In reality, if this happened and there were no other doctors present, nurses would suggest treatment options to help guide the doctor and get him/her to focus whilst someone else got another doctor to help. But this show, or at least this episode, made it seem that unless you've graduated medical school all you do is stand there and wait to be told what to do. In "Remedy" doctors are the best, and they are not to be advised nor are they to be questioned, as later we see the same doctor attempting to reduce a dislocated shoulder unsuccessfully until he gets advice from an unlikely source, the porter, who then gets belittled and bemoaned at by Dr Decker, who threatens to have the porter fired.

And that was a running theme - three separate staff members were threatened with losing their jobs for various, minor reasons that in reality would not lead to dismissal. And I stopped counting the number of arguemnts between staff members in front of patients. If I behaved that way I'd be called in to see management, but at this hospital everyone is out for themselves, all are self-serving and narcissistic, most with superiority complexes. In reality, healthcare professionals work as a team. From the very first argument in the hospital (also the first scene in the hospital) where the cleaner is cleaning down a room and being yelled at because a doctor had been told it was ready when it wasn't, I was left gobsmacked. The doctor could have gone to another room (we later found out the one next door was ready and available) or even offered to help clean the room to get it done quicker - this actually happens, I've had a surgeon help me make a bed so a patient could be seen. But no, this doctor starts a yelling match which only brings the cleaning to a halt!

Then the very next patient, a child who's name the doctor doesn't get right once, is seeing the afore mentioned Dr Decker who is supposedly a 3rd year resident. He tells the mother a porter will be along to take her daughter for a CT and when the mother asks "a what?" whilst he pays minimal attention, he starts to tell her a porter is the same as an orderly. The mother then clarifies she's asking why her daughter needs a CT scan and he says "to rule out a brain tumour" as he walks away. What the actual...? No, no, NO! Firstly, when treating younger, pre-teen patients its like have two patients - the child and the parent. Next, a doctor would never say that they're trying to rule out a brain tumour, not when there's a really small chance of that being the diagnosis and when it would be entirely out of the blue. Instead they'd say "we just want to run some more tests to get a clearer idea of what's causing your child to be ill" - saying "to rule out a brain tumour" to a worried parent would be like saying "your child is going to die" because that's all the worried parent would hear. BUT to then just walk away and continually dismiss the mother when she's just trying to get clarification?! If I saw this happen at work I'd be advising the mother to complain, I'd be dragging that doctor back to speak to the mother and I'd be getting the nursing manager and the doctor's senior in to talk with both the mother and the doctor.

There's a lot more I could go into, but this review is already pretty long. But I'd like to reassure everyone reading that 'Remedy' is the farthest thing from realistic in any way. Besides the fact they don't perform procedures evenly remotely close to realistically, we don't flippantly deliver bad news and walk off, we don't freeze in an emergency and be left to stand there, we don't yell and fight in front of patients, we don't watch out for ourselves and only ourselves or try to get our colleagues fired, nor do we try and intimidate our colleagues or run around on power trips. We work as a team, from the most senior doctors to the junior doctors, the nurses, the healthcare assistants...we support each other, we support our patients and their loved ones, we all pitch in our points and advocate for our patients and everyone is seen as equal, from the senior surgeons to the HCA and beyond, even the housekeepers, cleaners and catering staff, because we all have a role to play and without just one of those roles the team would not function.

Besides the shows horrendous portrayal of healthcare professionals and our work, the show is still terrible. It's just continuous arguments and fights with a lame plot that would be difficult to care about if it were the main focus of the show (in the first episode the long lost black sheep of the family returns home against his wishes after stabbing someone) but not only is the story a sub-plot with the main focus being dramatic fights, the characters aren't likeable enough to care about and, even for a pilot are very under-developed. Compare this with the very first episode of 'ER' and my heart broke for Doug, I really wanted Carol to pull through and Carter was like a rabbit in headlights in the funniest way. If you're looking for a medical drama with gripping storylines, dramatic plots, comical moments and a ton of realism to boot then I'd recommend you check that out instead. No sex in closets, nurses who actually do work instead of the doctors doing everything and extremely accurate medical dramatisation, 'ER' was, and still is a gem in a sea of medical drama excrement!

Remedy gets 1 star from me for two reasons; not only will IMDb not let me leave zero stars, but there is one believable character that I did care about - the porter, Bruno Dias, who was the only one who seemed to reflect what hospital staff are like - caring for patients and trying to alleviate their pain and their worries, and this proved to be the right path when he got thanked by the young girl at the end in front of Dr Decker who'd not long told him he'd have him fired. Unfortunately I'll never know if Bruno switches from brown to white as I can't watch another minute of the rest of the characters, nor the painfully inaccurate medical scenes. Though I did think it could become a drinking game - 1 shot for each inaccurate medical procedure, 1 shot for each fight, 1 double shot each time someone threatens to have someone fired...then I realised that would be at least 8 singles and 3 doubles in 40 minutes for the first episode alone.

stevendgreening

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