AVQ&A: What medical advice did you learn from pop culture?

The sudden resuscitation of medical shows, led by The Pitt, means we're getting 50 CCs of TV medical knowledge stat.

By A.V. Club Staff  |  April 12, 2025 | 8:00am
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AVQ&A: What medical advice did you learn from pop culture?
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On television, there’s always a doctor in the house. With the sudden resuscitation of medical shows, led by The Pitt, which wrapped its first season earlier this week, we’re getting 50 CCs of TV medical knowledge stat, and it has us thinking back on the pop-culture doctors’ orders that stuck with us. Whether we’re following South Park’s SARS recovery plan of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup, DayQuil, and Sprite or learning to administer Narcan from Rebel Ridge, there’s potentially as much medical advice to glean from Grey’s Anatomy as Gray’s Anatomy. Not that we should trust it blindly, but unfortunately, through laziness and the advice sounding right, pop culture’s cures and treatments have worked their way into our limited knowledge of medicine, in which we are not licensed. This week, Staff Writer Matt Schimkowitz asked the staff: What medical advice did you learn from pop culture?

As always, we invite you to contribute your own responses in the comments—and send in some prompts of your own! If you have a pop culture question you’d like us and fellow readers to answer, please email it to [email protected].

Terminator 2: Judgment Day: Put pressure on bullet wounds

“Keep pressure on it” isn’t the most pivotal line in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, yet it has rung in my head every time I have needed a Band-Aid since childhood. Who would have thought that applying pressure to a wound would help it to heal? John Connor. After Sarah (Linda Hamilton) catches a stray bullet from T-1000 (Robert Patrick), her son John (Edward Furlong) ties a bandanna around her leg, essentially creating a tourniquet. Though putting pressure on a wound is obvious advice, it speaks to the film’s quality that the brief aside stuck with me, basically teaching me how to bandage a wound, or boo-boo as I would call it, which is pretty essential knowledge to have. It was the first time I saw medical attention given in spaces other than doctor’s offices. Moreover, the advice works for Sarah, who survived the gunshot to get a legacy sequel and failed Terminator reboot to call her own. [Matt Schimkowitz]

30 Rock: Administering the self-Heimlich

As a writer who has lived alone with two cats just waiting for him to keel over so that they can have a nice warm feast, staying alive during emergencies has definitely been a topic of my late-night spiraling. So, the punchline of Jack Donaghy’s joke at the perpetually single Liz Lemon’s expense—her self-administration of the Heimlich maneuver after choking on food alone—was vital information for me to file away. At one point in my life, it seemed like only a matter of time before a too-ambitious bite of rotisserie chicken felled me, so watching the early episode of 30 Rock where Liz (Tina Fey) jettisons a chunk of TV dinner out of her airway by falling onto the back of a chair wasn’t just hilarious—it was instructional. Possessing this knowledge hasn’t led me to going on dates set up by my boss, but it has made me perhaps too confident when horking down leftovers. [Jacob Oller]

Clueless: Keep the injured person conscious if you think they have a concussion

My apologies to Joe Fox, but Clueless, not The Godfather, is the pop culture equivalent of the I Ching. Need a music recommendation? Grab that abandoned Cranberries CD from the quad. Looking for investment tips? Consider purchasing some art by the “way famous” Klaus Oldenberg. Wondering what to do for your friend who just got clocked by a flying clog? Keep her conscious in case she has a concussion (but make sure you ask her stuff she actually knows). Along with imparting snappy dialogue that I quote to this day, Amy Heckerling’s 1995 comedy taught me how to look after someone with a suspected head injury, advice that actually holds up outside of a Valley party. [Danette Chavez]

Back To The Beach: Keith Richards' hangover cure

In Back To The Beach, an insane ’80s comedy—its soundtrack features Pee-wee Herman singing “Surfin’Bird” and an Aimee Mann song—that I watched countless times as a kid, Frankie (Frankie Avalon) wakes up with a killer hangover in a stranger’s pad. So Michael (Tommy Hinkley) whips up a “little pick-me-up”: a foamy concoction made of Alka-Seltzer, Tylenol, coffee grounds, and Pepsi. (Thanks to the commenter on this message board for the ingredients.) “Keith Richards lives on these,” the young surfer tells the former one. “Keith? Richards?” Frankie asks.”The Rolling Stones. Trust me.” That scene is lodged in my memory—my brother gifted me coasters engraved with this very exchange—as is the advice that a ton of caffeine and pain relievers should do the trick. [Tim Lowery]

Grey's Anatomy: How to navigate the organ transplant list

Stick with Grey’s Anatomy long enough, and you’ll learn a lot about how to navigate the organ transplant process. Transplant patients are such a staple for the show that Meredith Grey’s (Ellen Pompeo) current love interest is specifically a transplant surgeon. Grey‘s will take you through every step of the process, from a patient getting put on the list, to doctors badgering UNOS (United Network for Organ Sharing), to how UNOS sorts and ranks patients who qualify for new organs, to the process of going to pick up a new organ from a different hospital and how that organ needs to be handled on the way to the awaiting recipient. The thoroughness with which they have covered this topic makes me feel like I’m incredibly well prepared should I or anyone I know ever end up on that list. But Grey’s also provides a very helpful guide for what not to do when a loved one is awaiting an organ transplant. Please, do not ever cut your loved one’s LVAD wire in order to bump them up on the transplant list. Even if you are a trained surgeon, this course of action is all but guaranteed to go very badly for you. Makes for great television, though. [Mary Kate Carr]

Anaconda: Emergency cricothyrotomy with a straw

I hope more than almost anything that I never find myself in a situation where I’m stung in the throat by a wasp in the Amazon Rainforest while chasing the largest snake known to man, but if I were, I would know what to do thanks to Anaconda. When Dr. Cale (Eric Stoltz) is somehow stung by a wasp while scuba diving, the sketchy-as-all-hell Paul Serone (Jon Voight) saves his life with a knife in a straw. Apparently, after sterilizing the neck with alcohol, you can simply cut a hole in the trachea and stick a straw in it so you can breathe if your throat has swollen closed. (I’ve also recently seen them do this, albeit with real tools, on The Pitt, so the procedure checks out.) Granted, it’s not something I wouldn’t rather have done in a hospital, but it’s good to know. Plus, Cale’s recuperation was one of the main things that keeps him from becoming anaconda food as the plot progresses. [Drew Gillis]

Grey's Anatomy: Spotting (and taking seriously) the heart attack symptoms for women

As a loyal Grey’s Anatomy viewer, I like to delude myself into thinking I could perform an intubation, cricothyrotomy, or even deliver a baby if trapped with a person who’s gone into labor in an elevator or something. Fear not, I won’t attempt any of this ever. But watching Grey’s has been impactful. What’s stuck with me most is from a season 14 outing during which Dr. Miranda Bailey (Chandra Wilson) checks herself into a different hospital (so as not to alarm her coworkers) because she suspects she’s having a heart attack. However, no one there takes her seriously. The white male attending blames her indicators on stress and other heightened feelings. Of course, Bailey knows what she’s talking about. “I would take into consideration statistics that would never even occur to people who look like you,” she tells her tactless doctor. Grey’s takes this opportunity to discuss how the symptoms of coronary disease for men and women are different and that women of color are disproportionately at risk. Because I have multiple older women in my family, I distinctly remember that this episode prompted me to go down an internet rabbit hole to spot and take these types of symptoms (pain in other body parts, heightened anxiety, fatigue, dizziness, etc.) seriously. [Saloni Gajjar] 

Various: Never, ever pull the knife out

This one has been in so many movies and TV shows, I genuinely can’t remember where I first saw it. All I know is that if I’m ever stabbed, either by someone else’s hand or my own terrible kitchen skills, that knife will stay put until someone a lot better at Operation than me can figure out what to do. I really, really hope I’ll never have to use this particular bit of knowledge, but at least I know—via a little personal research and, admittedly, Grey’s Anatomy—that it’s sound medical advice. Who knows what instincts will take over if I do find myself in that situation, but if I can keep a cool head—and enough blood in my body to get myself to a hospital—at least I’ll have done better than Jack (a spinal surgeon!) in that one episode of Lost where he pulled a knife directly out of Sawyer’s artery. [Emma Keates]

 
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