Netizens skewer GMA teleserye over lack of realistic medical protocols in scene from one episode
What happens when network wars, partisan politics, and social media clout-chasing collide? The answer, GMA Network found out when netizens roasted a teleserye drama scene for making an apparent mockery of real-life proper medical protocols.
In Episode 23 of the medical drama series “Abot Kamay Na Pangarap,” young doctor Analyn Santos (Jillian Ward) disagrees with her colleagues over the diagnosis of a patient who is seen writhing in pain on a stretcher. Dr. Santos believes the patient is suffering from appendicitis and not from abnormal uterine bleeding as initially diagnosed. The young doctor then proceeds to knock heavily on the doors of the operating theater, demanding that the patient be let in. so she could go under the knife immediately. Dr. Santos has a tense argument with a consultant surgeon who, after at first scolding the upstart physician for having “turned this hospital into a circus,” realizes that the young doctor’s diagnosis is right and proceeds to order a an “appendectomy, stat!”
Because on Twitter each opinion apparently matters, a hundred mocking tweets about the scene ensued. This is especially true when something goes viral. The comment-chain goes on and on, with really nothing new to add to the discussion, until the trending issue gets discarded for the next target. From the characters overstepping professional boundaries to overacting, the experts on Twitter had plenty to say.
Dr. Sison is a beloved doctor-influencer, but this tweet is a poor choice of words. It comes across as assuming that our doctors and nurses are so stupid they’re unable to differentiate a badly made medical drama from real-life situations. Our hardworking healthcare professionals may be underpaid, but they do their jobs very well under strict observance of protocol. They’re not four-year-olds who imitate what they see on TV.
Similar soap-opera tensions unfold in Korean and American medical drama series: surgeons growling “stat” to a harried nurse, orderlies rushing a patient on a stretcher to the operating theater, patients receiving medical attention as soon as they’re wheeled into the hospital. But they don’t get the public flaying that the GMA series is receiving.
Could it be because Suzette Doctolero, GMA Creative Consultant and Headwriter, happens to be a vocal supporter of former President Rodrigo Duterte and current President Bongbong Marcos, and is therefore persona non grata among the popular Twitter accounts? If that’s the case, then displeasure might be misplaced, as Doctolero does not appear to the connected to “Abot Kamay na Pangarap.”
Or maybe they haven’t forgiven GMA for that unbelievably idiotic scene from “Kambal Karibal” in which a nurse is trying to revive a patient with a “no-contact” CPR.
If you want a medical drama that accurately mirrors real-life situations, make the patient collapse after waiting 24 hours to be admitted into emergency only to make them wait some more before a doctor could attend to them, have the consultant turn up for a one-minute bedside consult and charge a PF of 20,000, follow the patient’s family as they slog through Metro Manila traffic and endure kilometric queues to get the necessary PhilHealth paperwork or surgical supplies that the government hospital has sent them on a went goose chase to procure. Mostly it’s waiting. Lots and lots of waiting. Not very exciting, is it?
Comparisons with GMA’s rival ABS-CBN were also inevitable:
The hullaballoo also shows it’s easy to take a singular moment from an episode and take it out of context. Regular viewers of the series, or those who at least took the time to watch the episode in its entirety, offered to put things in perspective:
Yes, it’s ridiculously bad it’s bordering on farce. But it’s soap opera. Twins are separated at birth and their fates hinge on the secrets disclosed on a long-lost diary. Key characters get kidnapped and later rescued in an abandoned warehouse. An honest cop refuses bribes and does his work despite threats to his and his family’s safety and lives to his old age. Art doesn’t have to imitate life.
The reactions were disproportionately mean and churlish, with some misplaced pedantry thrown in. Lighten up, people. Picking at easy targets doesn’t make you look smart; it makes you look the sanctimonious woke armchair warriors that you are, as the following screenshot seems to imply:
