I do not watch the Pitt. Many, many, many people have told me that I need to watch the most groundbreaking show that illustrates what hospital life is like on a crazy shift.
No thank you, I live it enough.
I mean, ER started my sophomore year at Creighton. It aired on Thursday nights and all the nursing students would critique it in class on Fridays. That is the goal post that I have in my head and nothing has measured up to it.
But in the latest episode of the second season of the Pitt that aired April 10th, a woman came in with chest pain and coded and nearly died because her paramedics (sad pouty face) didn’t want to disturb her bra.
I personally can handle exposed breasts/titties if it saves my life.
Just saying.
In the clips that I have seen of this scene, Robby (the head MD) asks the women in the room “Hey, ladies in the room, show of hands. Death with modesty or life with brief nudity? Death or Life? Look at that. Turns out women want to live”. He says this to what I presume is the head paramedic.
No bra, no matter what the cost, is worth a life.
It takes me back to my very first ACLS (Adult cardiac life support) instructor (before they got fancy and called it ALS [advanced life support]). She stood at the front of the class and told us that the first thing you do in a code is take your own pulse for a brief second. Now that you have ascertained that YOU are not dead you can help the patient who is.
I use similar phrasing when I run the Call Bootcamp for the hospital. I was asked if the responders from the hospital, from the ER and the ICU, need to put on bunny suits to enter the OR. I said no, the patient isn’t getting more dead. So there wasn’t any risk of infection.
This made me curious so I did a quick Google search. My search terms were are women less likely to receive defibrillation.
Spoiler alert.
Yeah, women are less likely to get bystander CPR and defibrillation.
Of course we are.
There are hits from the Duke University School of Medicine from 2024, from the National Institutes of Health in 2023. From Science Direct in 2026.
From the American Heart Association itself in 2024.
The list goes on and on and on.
Save a life, expose a breast.
That is the very very very very first thing I leaned when I took CPR in high school.
Expose the chest, make sure there are no barriers, or standing water.
It’s like a demented Little Red Riding Hood parody.
But grandmama, what pretty bra you are wearing.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 