For those of you not familiar with this new TNT series, it centers around the Chief Nursing Officer, Christina Hawthorne (and the cleverly capitalized RN in the title is all TNT, not me), played by Jada Pinkett Smith. Hawthorne just lost her husband about a year ago and this series deals with her personal life as a new widow and now single mother along with her work as the CNO.

This episode focuses mostly on an elderly woman who has been on the ventilator now for 10 weeks and the hospital is feeling the pressure to get her extubated because they need the ICU bed. My first issue with this episode comes when they are speaking with the patient's son. They tell him that when there are no brain waves there is no chance for recovery. A correct statement but hmm... Is she brain dead?

The son asks for just 24 hours more to come to grips with things then he will take her off the life support himself(they offer to help him with it but he wants to do it himself). But the hospital needs the bed. So Hawthorne sets a storage room up to house the ventilated patient and thus give the son 24 hours more. A storage room complete with a shorting out power strip to plug the vent into. Again, hmm...

Meanwhile, a seemingly uncaring daughter enters the picture and demands the patient be taken off the life support right now as the patient had stated she did not want this. She goes to the cold hospital administrator type who demands the plug be pulled. (Is there an advanced directive? Or was it just a verbal thing? That was unclear to me.)

The biggest issue though was the very strange way of they had of removing "life support". They turn a dial and the patient's pulse and blood pressure drop (but you could still hear the vent going). Then they turn it again and the pulse and blood pressure drop further (vent sounds still present) and you hear the flatline. Hmm...

But even though Hawthorne wasn't able to grant the sons wish, it all ends ok. We find out later, the son had gotten a chance to come to the patient's room and say goodbye and the evil daughter cries when they told her her mother had died.

The title I started with for this post was "HawthoRNe and Palliative Extubation" but as I was writing I realized that they never say the word extubation and that is indeed not what they do. They say "remove life support" and "pull the plug" and it is all done with one dial. I do applaud the writers of Hawthorne trying to address end of life issues and the sentiment is there, but the attempt left me a bit confused. It seemed to be focused more on the stereotype of what people think "life support" is than any medical facts. I realize that the sentiment was really the whole point, but I couldn't get past the poorly done technical parts.

The episode had some other issues (nurse in hot pants doing drug inventory). The characters seemed stereotypical and the other plot lines were predictable. Some of the acting wasn't great. I think this may be the one and only time I watch HawthoRNe but I would be interested to hear what others, in and out of the medical field, think.