11 Grey’s Anatomy Medical Scenes That Are Totally Inaccurate

•  Grey’s Anatomy prioritizes dramatic television over medical accuracy, which has led to memorable but inaccurate medical scenes.
•  The show often fails to follow real-life protocols and procedures, resulting in doctors making egregious errors that fans remember.
•  From wearing jewelry during surgery to delivering bad news in public spaces, Grey’s Anatomy frequently gets medical details wrong and disregards the roles of nurses.

Over the course of its nearly two-decade run, Grey’s Anatomy has offered up its fair share of medical scenes that are totally inaccurate. Even though ABC’s long-running medical drama aims to raise awareness of real-world issues, from institutionalized racism to the barriers complicating gender-affirming care, it sometimes favors heightening the stakes over all else. Understandably, creator Shonda Rhimes and her team prioritize making great, dramatic television over medical accuracy – a tactic that’s led to all 19 seasons of Grey’s Anatomy being incredibly memorable.

Of course, that doesn’t mean Grey’s Anatomy viewers aren’t questioning the series’ choices. The show may consult with medical experts, but that doesn’t mean the Grey’s team follows real-life policies and procedures when they craft each episode’s medical mystery. In putting the focus on entertainment value, the series has seen its supposedly competent doctors making egregious errors, and so many of those Grey’s Anatomy scenes live rent-free in fans’ heads. At times, these medical inaccuracies are so blatant that it’s grounds for medical (drama) malpractice.

11Grey’s Anatomy Doctors Wrongly Wear Jewelry During Surgery

When it comes to standard operating-room protocol, the doctors on Grey’s Anatomy seem careful and competent to the average viewer. Audiences see the attendings scrub in and don surgical gowns, gloves, caps, and masks. It all comes across as routine – enough so that Grey Sloan Memorial feels like a smooth operation (at least in some respects). However, Grey’s Anatomy fails when it comes to the minutiae.

For starters, surgeons are constantly wearing jewelry in the OR. The series goes out of its way to show doctors removing their wedding bands, but that’s about it. This might seem like an insignificant goof, but, when it comes to having a patient open on a table, one can never be too careful. Given that Dr. Levi Schmitt (Jake Borelli) drops his glasses into a mid-op patient, it’s surprising a rogue earring hasn’t found its way into an open cavity.

10Grey’s Anatomy’s Doctors Gave An MRI To A Patient With A Fork In Their Neck

One of the most notorious Grey’s Anatomy mistakes fans refused to miss was that time Dr. Derek Shepherd (Patrick Dempsey) ordered an MRI on a patient with a fork sticking out of her neck. The key issue, of course, is that Shepherd doesn’t tell anyone to remove the fork before putting the patient in the machine, which is a huge misstep.

As even laypeople know, patients must remove all metal before entering an MRI machine (via Shields Health). Essentially, the machine is a giant magnet, which means it would forcibly pull the fork from the patient’s neck, causing untold damage. It’s not brain surgery — and yet Derek fails to grasp this essential protocol. For this reason, season 2’s episode 20 remains an enduring example of what Grey’s Anatomy gets wrong about practicing medicine.

9Grey’s Doctors Use Medical Equipment Incorrectly

While Grey’s Anatomy‘s cast might’ve been giving viewers mask-wearing tips during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the actors don’t always use the tools of the trade correctly. In speaking with PureWow, real-life Dr. Kailey Remien had some specific gripes, especially when it came to stethoscope usage. “The ear tips should angle into the ear canal,” Dr. Remien explains. “The actors tend to put theirs on so that the ear tips angle back onto their outer ear.” Not only is the approach inaccurate, but it would also obstruct the doctors’ chances of hearing anything at all.

8Grey’s Trauma Patients Are 3 Times More Likely To Die Than In Real Life

As a medical drama with 19 seasons’ worth of stories (and plenty of theories about Grey’s Anatomy season 20’s story), the show often reaches for medical obscurities to keep things fresh. “We’re the one percent hospital,” executive producer Zoanne Clack tells Entertainment Weekly. “We have a file of strange, mysterious, fun, and interesting cases to draw from.” Of course, with Grey Sloan Memorial seeing so many medical anomalies, saving lives becomes much more of a challenge.

According to a study performed by Trauma Surgery & Acute Care Open, Grey’s patients are three times more likely to die than real-life trauma patients (via The Conversation). A whopping 71% of the show’s patients are transferred from the ER to the OR with haste — a percentage that completely dwarfs that of real life. Moreover, if a Grey’s Anatomy trauma patient is lucky enough to survive surgery, odds are they’ll recover incredibly quickly, as opposed to real-life patients.

7Real Surgeons Don’t Deliver Bad News In Public Waiting Rooms

Thankfully, real-life surgeons, doctors, and nurses don’t deliver bad news to patients’ loved ones in public spaces. Grey’s Anatomy is far from being the only medical drama to set heartbreaking moments in the hospital’s waiting rooms, but it’s still a rather troubling notion. Clearly, being in a bustling waiting room – replete with other characters who are able to see what’s happening – lends itself to storytelling much better than closed-off, private rooms.

6Emergency Medicine Doctors Are Non-Existent In Grey’s Anatomy

At non-television hospitals, emergency medicine doctors play a crucial role in caring for patients. In fact, emergency medicine is a dedicated specialty. In a trauma department, an EM would carry out the immediate assessment and treatment of a patient. However, in the world of Meredith Grey (Ellen Pompeo) and co., surgeons with other specialties double as emergency medicine doctors. To up the dramatic stakes, the attendings will even meet the trauma patients in the ambulance bay. Given what we know, Grey’s Anatomy season 20 will continue this troubling structure.

5Grey’s Anatomy’s Post-Op Transplant Patients Don’t Worry About Infection

The number of surgeries the Grey Sloan Memorial team performs is more astounding than the intricate web that is Meredith Grey’s career timeline. Not to mention, many of them require experimental treatments or surgical methods. Given all the cutting-edge, high-stakes situations, it seems logical that the doctors would take extra care to ensure their immunocompromised, post-op patients aren’t put at greater risk for infection. However, that’s just not how television works. After transplant patients are rolled out of the OR, family members hug them – sans PPE. Even doctors eschew proper medical-grade protection once someone’s back in a recovery room.

4Nurses Are Ignored In Grey’s Anatomy (& Doctors’ Roles Are Overinflated)

There have been fairly few non-doctor characters to make a big impact in Grey’s Anatomy. For the most part, everything centers on the hospital’s surgeons and incoming surgical residents and interns. After all, that’s the premise of the series. However, the soon-to-be 20-season show does a real disservice to nurses, who are of critical importance when it comes to real-life patient care. And, given the amount of times the Grey’s Anatomy characters should’ve gone to jail, they could probably use some watchful nurses on the floor.

While doctors are tasked with observing patients, forming diagnoses, and creating treatment plans, it’s nurses who gather patient information and put a doctor’s orders into practice (via Northeastern University | School of Nursing). In Grey’s Anatomy, surgeons – and doctors at large – hold patients’ hands through their hospital stay (sometimes literally), which just isn’t feasible in the real world. Patients see their surgeons much less frequently and communicate on a more regular basis with their nurses.

3Derek Doesn’t Properly Administer CPR

An allegedly renowned neurosurgeon, the late Derek Shepherd doesn’t seem particularly well-versed in some of the basics of medical care. In one of the many Grey’s Anatomy episodes where Meredith almost dies, the titular doctor nearly drowns in Elliot Bay. To resuscitate Meredith, Derek administers non-stop CPR, but doesn’t do so properly. Instead of following the proper 30 chest compressions for every two rescue breaths metric, the surgeon administers five chest compressions and then a rescue breath. In his panic, Derek clearly forgets the basics of how to save a life.

2Izzie Commits Malpractice (& Isn’t Fired)

Despite only lasting 6 seasons on the series, Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl) commits her fair share of medical malpractice. The most egregious might even top all of the many worst decisions Meredith has made on Grey’s Anatomy. In season 2, Izzie meets Denny Duquette (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a patient with congestive heart failure. Over time, the two fall in love, but the romance isn’t just ill-advised — it’s ill-fated. In order to move Denny up on the transplant list, Izzie cuts his LVAD wire, which means the device is no longer capable of pumping his blood.

This complication not only makes Denny sicker, but bumps him to the top of the transplant list based on the severity of his condition and the urgency of his situation. Even though Izzie steals a heart and breaks her “do no harm” oath, she isn’t fired from the hospital. To make matters worse, Denny dies from a stroke after the successful heart transplant. Later on, a near-death (and clearly still guilty) Izzie sees Denny when she hallucinates, but it’s pretty clear that her actions should’ve ended her medical career altogether.

1The Surgeons Constantly “Break Scrub”

In Grey’s Anatomy, there’s a reason doctors “practice” medicine: they’re all still learning. What makes Grey Sloan Memorial feel more like a teaching hospital than anything else, however, is the pre-op decisions doctors make after scrubbing in. The practice of scrubbing makes for a safe, sterile environment. Once a surgeon has washed up and been dressed with the appropriate PPE, they enter the OR to perform surgery. However, the show’s doctors constantly “break scrub,” usually by holding their hands in front of their mouths. It’s great for dramatic effect, but it’s also a great way for the doctors of Grey’s Anatomy to spread infections to their vulnerable patients.

Sources: Shields Health, PureWow, Entertainment Weekly, The Conversation, Northeastern University | School of Nursing