Doctor Stock Photo #FAILS

I’m a practicing hospitalist and also the Chief Medical Officer here at medaptus. It is in this latter role that I find myself looking at stock medical photos and often as per the request of our marketing team.  I may be crafting a presentation or advising on our website, or I may be on the receiving end of a pitch.  Either way, I’m continually amazed by how many mistakes I see in these photos.  Maybe it’s just me that finds such bloopers irritating, but it forces me to wonder why can’t the photographer or producer take just a brief amount of time to make the photo reflect actual hospital reality?  In fact, the minute I see something that isn’t quite right, I start to analyze why it’s wrong.  I’m no longer paying attention to the presentation, and I’m wondering, especially for vendors, do you have clinical staff in your organization? Because if you don’t have someone who knows enough to stop you from using a #StockFail, do you have someone who really understands my problems and can help me solve them?

 For example, in this photo, we have a very nice smiling doctor (I presume she’s a doctor as she has on a white coat, but I can’t read her badge) with a patient and she’s apparently supposed to be taking his pulse.  Now let’s set aside that the vitals are usually already taken by someone else.  It’s not unreasonable for her to do so.  In fact, I often take someone’s pulse as the first part of the physical exam to create a gentle transition into my touching of the patient for the first time.  No, the real problem is that she is somehow trying to take his pulse by palpating his median nerve!  The radial artery (which is what you are palpating when you take someone’s pulse) is not in the middle of the wrist.  It’s on the lateral edge (thumb side) of the forearm (between the tendons of the brachioradialis and flexor carpi radialis if you care for the specific anatomy).  It wouldn’t take much to have someone – anyone – who knows something about medicine to fix this pose.

What are your thoughts? Comment below!