5 Grey's Anatomy Medical Errors That Would Make Real Doctors Roll Their Eyes

Grey's Anatomy is one of the longest-running medical shows, but don't expect it to be surgically precise with the little details. While everyone understands that it's just a show and not a medical school, here are some of the show's worst mistakes that probably made you cringe if you're a doctor.

First-year residents performing surgery

Yeah, no. In Grey's Anatomy Season 1, first-year resident George O'Malley is chosen to perform an appendectomy — something that would be an actual nightmare in a real-life hospital. Aspiring doctors spend their first years observing and learning how to take care of patients, not actually performing risky surgeries.

CPR

The CPR procedure on Grey's Anatomy does not hold water, according to fans who seem to be more or less familiar with how the process should go. It's a mystery why the show doesn't try to make it more realistic.

"When doing CPR, you must be directly over the patient with [your] arms locked straight, directly under [your] shoulders, and you do the compressions using the force of your body, not bending [your] arms. However in Grey's, they are almost always bending their arms to do the compressions. The patients would die from over half of these surgeons CPR," Redditor dancingdinosaur111 noted.

No, Hangovers Don't Work That Way

In season 2 episode 6, Meredith shows up to work hungover, and uses a "banana bag": a yellow I.V. drip with fluid filled with vitamins and electrolytes. In real life, however, this is a completely useless way to deal with a hangover. The only appropriate course of action for Meredith would be to call in sick.

A sponge inside a patient

Seriously, it's impossible to imagine a real-life hospital situation where a doctor could leave a sponge inside a patient and walk away like nothing happened after being sued for it. But that's exactly what happened on Grey's Anatomy in Season 10 when Callie left a sponge inside snowboarder Travis Reed, causing an infection that left him very sick and unable to compete. How did she get away with it in court?

Bad way to practice

In Season 5, we are led to believe that the interns are practicing surgery on... each other. George catches some of his interns cutting themselves and then practicing stitching each other up, and while it's not a medical malpractice that could lead to disaster, it's disturbing enough for a reprimand.