Ampang Wannabe : the shit continues

The writers and directors of Ampang Medikal just do not know their limits. They aim high but do not have the knowledge or even expertise to execute their objectives.


Episode 4 clearly exposes their weakness with blatant disregard for finesse.


The whole episode centered on a 10 year old child with leukaemia who supposedly was dying. And as her last wish she wanted to donate her organs to help others. Noble issues to highlight but execution was….. as my hubby said ‘reeks of rotten mango with a tinge of belacan’.


My first bone to pick was the choice of actress to portray the sick dying child. She did not doesn't even look as if she had underwent chemotherapy at all; and her hair was long and shiny; her cheeks pink and rosy and her skim smooth and radiant.She looked more like a normal HEALTHY bubbly girl. Hey producers, there is such things as special effects and make-up artiste.


Second, don’t the producers know that one of the excluding criteria of organ donation is active cancer?


Third, well this issue is an ongoing issue with this series. The show do not know the local medical environment and uses American terms in their dialogue. For example, Dr Wong was overheard saying “ saya perlu mengambil darah untuk ujian CBC’. CBC stands for complete blood count but in Malaysia we use the term FBC or Full Blood Count. It may be a small thing but it is clearly a lack of research on the writers part (As we know, they just plagiarize the whole thing from Grey’s Anatomy, thus the American term. I am sure they are too stingy to pay the local medical experts such as myself to run through the scripts and scenes)


Fourth, after the girl died, the camera was focusing on the child and her parents. Have some sense not to show the chest moving up and down with each silent breath she took. Oh us ever so stupid viewers might think that "It's a miracle, she's alive".


Lastly, again a recurrent issue. The set-up; I wonder, why in a critically ill patient, there was no vital signs monitoring, no sphygmomanometer, no cardiac monitoring, nothing. And the chest leads to monitor the heart activity again ended beneath the sheets. It must be a very state of the art hospital bed as all the wires appeared to be connected to the bed ;)


And that’s Episode Four for you. Crappy and unrealistic!

My new addiction

I must admit although Ampang Medikal is a disgrace I am hooked into watching it. My Thursday's night is never the same again. I will never see a Malaysian hospital in the same light again and to think I work in one everyday.

May god have mercy for my soul.

Anyway, the damned show is utterly confusing. Before I move on, let us get the cast right. This information is taken from the press release in the Star.

There are FOUR house-officers : Dr Siti Alesyha (aka Meridith Grey), Dr Melissa (query if she's a crossover between Meredith and - I guess we will find out later), Dr Wong Sui Chen (aka Izzie) and Dr Rajesh (??? George or Karev)

And there are the specialists, Dr Jeffrey the paediatrician; Dr Maznah the cardiologist ; Dr Idris the surgeon and Dr Amir Shah Stephen the neurologist. I reckon the producers are confused too and used cardiologist/ cardiothoracic surgeon and neurologist versus neurosurgeon interchangably.

The storylines are weak so I have decided to dedicate my Thursday evenings to rectify JUST the technical blunders.

Top three highlights for Episode Three:

No 3. Melissa and Dr Amir (the neurologist cum neurosurgeon) confronted Nasha who had just delivered..."daripada pemeriksaan yang kami lakukan terhadap bayi encik kami dapati tanda-tanda yang konsisten dengan pengambilan dadah semsa mengandung"... and then Amir said" bayi encik perlu menjalani pembedahan cardiopulmonary bypass bagi meletakkan jantung dan paru-paru artificial untuk perjalanan darah". No other explanation, nothing!

I was totally perplexed by this scene. Dr Amir is a neurosurgeon NOT an obstetrician NOR a paediatrician OR EVEN a cardiothoracic surgeon. Then the other matter, withdrawal syndrome in an infant is mainly supportive treatment i.e. support the child till the drugs are out of his system... not surgery. Hmmmm.......


No 2. Mr Fernandez was intubated but there is no ventilators nor any vital sign monitors in the room. The tube just ends under the pillow.....arrghhhh. And to think this was said in the Star when asked about the medical setup.

".......... Azhar’s involvement in Ampang Medikal has sparked a new venture in his life: he recently set up a production house offering quality mock hospital equipment after realising there is a dire need for it in the local film industry.

“It is not easy to get permission to shoot in hospitals (Ampang Medikal managed to shoot some scenes in Assunta Hospital in Petaling Jaya but could do so only on weekends) and I realised that there is a need for such facilities,” the canny actor explains.

The production house – called, appropriately enough, Emergency Room – in Plaza Damas in Sri Hartamas, KL, even has a realistic-looking emergency room!...."

Duh, realistic, oh puhlease!


No 1. The patient Mr Fernandez is wheeled into the 'ER'. Dr Wong puts a BP cuff on his arm( yeah, they got this right) and then applied the stethoscope to the chest while reading the BP. She yells out to Dr Rajesh "tekanan darah tidak stabil, start CPR". The fella started CPR and then immediately Dr Wong shocked him, not once but twice. And hooray, Mr Fernandez was revived!

Comment: Dang! Who is their bloody technical advisor? First of all, you DO NOT put the stets on the chest when you are reading the pressure. Second, start CPR when the sign is low BP? CPR is only commenced when there is no pulse; there is 101 things to do for a low BP. And again, you do not shock a patient with low BP!!! I am appalled! Who ever is their technical advisor should be shot (or in this case, shocked) to death.

So there it is. That's my top three blunders for this week. Stay tuned for next week's highlights!