Putting the E.R. in 'blunder'
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- Опубліковано 28 сер 2023
- Scott Manley, Anna Ploszajski and Bill Sunderland face a question about some puzzling pills.
LATERAL is a weekly podcast about interesting questions and even more interesting answers, hosted by Tom Scott. For business enquiries, contestant appearances or question submissions, visit www.lateralcast.com
GUESTS:
Scott Manley: @scottmanley, / djsnm
Anna Ploszajski: @AnnaPloszajskiTV, / annaploszajski
Bill Sunderland: @consumethismedia, / escthispodcast
HOST: Tom Scott.
QUESTION PRODUCER: David Bodycombe.
RECORDED AT: The Podcast Studios, Dublin.
EDITED BY: Julie Hassett.
GRAPHICS: Chris Hanel at Support Class. Assistant: Dillon Pentz.
MUSIC: Karl-Ola Kjellholm ('Private Detective'/'Agrumes', courtesy of epidemicsound.com).
FORMAT: Pad 26 Limited/Labyrinth Games Ltd.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: David Bodycombe and Tom Scott.
© Pad 26 Limited (www.pad26.com) / Labyrinth Games Ltd. 2023. - Розваги
I feel if John Green had been in the show this episode would’ve turned into “And here’s 5000 more depressing facts about tuberculosis!
It’s *all* tuberculosis.
The green cross instead of the red one on the thumbnail is a nice touch. Wouldn’t want to violate the Geneva Conventions 👀😉
Scott goes immediately to butt stuff and then Tom digs deeper with the suicide angle. What an episode. 10/10
Credit to the people who do Tom Scott's captions on all his channels, making the caption go above the on screen text instead of overlaying it is really helpful!
Yeah, had to put the captions on to get it
Yeah, it's used a lot in Japanese and other Asian scripts to explain the pronunciations in katakana above lesser-known kanji, it's called ruby text, the way it's used here in English is really clever and I wish more people use it in other languages
@RobtheMod It's a company called JS*, and I've seen them on many channels including Jet Lag, wouldn't be surprised if they also used to do TV, actually
The nice thing is that I can download the text and count how much each person talked in the show. So Tom talked 32% of the time, Bill talked 31%, then Anna 24% of the time and finally Scott talked 11% of the time.
I wish Google allowed us smaller creators to have access to that style of captioning, rather than just the professional captionning companies. I also wish they still allowed the community to caption things, which vastly helped the spread of properly (non-AI) captioned content
My favorite part was Tom's explanation of why it's illegal in the UK and Europe to provide prescription meds in bottles. As someone who has lived in the US and New Zealand, where almost all meds are provided in bottles, the idea of such a simple change reducing suicides is pretty mind-blowing.
In the UK, pharmacists can be difficult to get past - they ask questions which might feel intrusive. They'll also refuse to sell you more than a certain quantity of medication or even refuse altogether (there's a particular Boots branch which a group of us know of as the shop that refuses to sell you anything). Don't know if they have local or merely in-house guidelines. But if you want loads of painkillers (or certain other items) you'd need to go to several pharmacists to stock up. It wouldn't stop someone determined to stockpile painkillers for a suicide attempt, but it'd make it inconvenient. If you ask for tons of painkillers (or other medication) they could ask some medical questions and/or recommend you see your doctor because, quite rightly, if you need it in quantity you may have a medical issue.
@@prva9347 In the UK, it's illegal to sell more than 100 painkiller tablets (paracetamol or aspirin) at a time, but you won't be able to buy more than a couple of packs (of 16) without talking to a pharmacist. It'll get flagged up on the till in any Boots or your average supermarket.
I had assumed it was so they could charge 1CHF per tablet. I can't remember a time in the states, when I didn't have more than 50 tablets of Advil on hand. Here, I've had to get used to buying 9 tablets at a time. I guess they will never be on hand, if I wanted to abuse them. But, it also means that, if I wake up with a headache I would have to walk to the pharmacy and buy them, rather than just go to the medicine cabinet.
As an spanish speaker myself i was screaming to the screen since Anna said the character took eleven pils. So simple and so clever as well. Nice question!
Same here. ONCE!!! ONCE PASTILLAS!!!
I'm ashamed that as a Spanish speaker myself it never crossed my mind. I find both languages to be very segregated in my mind.
@@MrMistery101 Don't be ashamed. I can't imagine anyone seeing "take once per day" and thinking only the word "once" is in Spanish 😂
I thought for sure it would be a kerning issue, like "Take 1 2 times a day" becoming "Take 12 times a day"
But prescription bottles use a phrase like "take 1 tablet twice daily"
@@bob_._. We have a packet of pills that say "Take 1 tablet twice per day". I think I have seen some use 'once' in some way. This is on the label applied by the dispensing chemist - there are variations in the way instructions are written on these labels. The manufacturer's leaflet inside the box is usually written out fully and more clearly.
@@bob_._. but doctor's writing often use mnemonics like this. I often have to ask my doctor what do they mean by "ibuprofenum* 2 2 2" and it turns out it means to take two pills in the morning, two in the afternoon and two in the evening or something even more non-intuitive.
@@jaywu1951 There are still places where a doctor handwrites a prescription and this is given to to the patient? Here labels on medication have been printed for decades, and nowadays, prescriptions go to pharmacies electronically.
@@jaywu1951 And that "ibuprofen 2 2 2" shows up on pill bottle label from the pharmacy? Wow.
I figured it would be something simple like "take with food" and since she had snacks throughout the day she kept taking them
Ditto.
once i heard "once a day" and connected it with 11 i was so frustrated at how long it was taking them
Sad part, that scenario on the show is based on real events where a mother misread the label for her daughter's prescription.
I find it very sketchy, so a person decides to read only one word in Spanish and not the rest? I feel this is very made up by people that dont know how multilingual works.
@@Ketraar The mind makes a lot of odd connections when you only know half the language. If you've learned a language at an older age I'm sure you have experienced a weird connection yourself. They're sometimes referred to as 'false friends'.
@@KetraarI often hear people speaking non-English languages revert to single English words in the middle of conversations when they don't have an appropriate word in their language, or even sometimes because it's just easier to say.
@@punkdigerati Sure but we are talking a medical prescription, not a pub conversation right? So any person reading it would know it was written in English not half in Spanish. What I'm saying is, its not a very clever gimmick, but the writing in ER is not really that good anyway.
@@gogogalian Sure, but again not in a official medical setting, in a case like that a person with proper English skill would have supervised. I grew up in a country where my parents could not speak it for the longest time, everything official was passed to me (as a child) to translate. Hence why it snot plausible, but as mentioned, its low quality writing and they have to make up stuff to justify shooting low quality series somehow. :P
I got my best-ever life advice from the side of a pill bottle. It said "Keep away from small children."
I was so proud of working this out, and I may have ended up shouting at the screen.
Pills in big bottles made a lot of sense to me because it's significantly less waste than the same quantity in blister packs. Now that I've heard the reasoning I'm coming around.
Pills in blister packs is also less likely to be confused with candy.
If it's a daily over the counter supplement/vitamin, I think a bottle with a hundred or more pills is fine. I've seen bottles of Calcium with something like 300 pills in them (people usually take that every day, sometimes two a day, and they have a very long shelf life). But something like Tylenol or Advil or Aleve, I see those bottles with 100 or more pills and really scratch my head at that. If someone is taking one or two of those a day, every single day indefinitely, there is more going on with them and they should probably see a doctor. They are also potentially causing real harm to their body. The expiration date on such pain killers is usually 12 to 18 months from when you buy it. So when I buy a bottle, knowing that I maybe need one or two a month, I go for something with only 30 or 40 pills in it. More is just a waste.
In a hospital setting though: everything is in a blister pack for safety reasons (each pill gets scanned that way).
6:16 if watching john green the last few months has taught me anything it's that TB is always relevant
Literally just came to the comments to find someone talking about John and here we are lmao
This one is super easy if you speak spanish. While learning english, the first time you heard that word the jokes are inevitable.
I specifically remember this plot point, because it's how I learned the Spanish for "eleven."
As soon as Bill said "once daily" it clicked. He had it in his first punch
I was so expecting it to read “take 1 1/day” as shorthand for “1 pill once per day”
Ironically, tuberculosis is one of those conditions where taking many pills per day is actually the standard at least in the UK.
I got this one in less than a minute, and I love that he pointed at me directly at the end.
kinda want an episode with tom, tom and scott now
5:40 thanks for that bit of trivia Tom, I didn't know that, seems very important.
I NEVER THOUGHT I WOULD GET ONE OF THESE BEFORE THE PLAYERS BUT I DID AND IM SO HAPPY
Holy crap, I saw that episode probably like 15-20 years ago but I still remember that part because I thought it was really clever. I didn't even remember which show it was from, but the once vs once bit just stuck with me. (assuming that's what it is, that would be really embarrassing, if that's not it)
I work at a hospital pharmacy and once a order came through for 13 suppositories per dose. We got that fixed under the ASSumption that this wasn't a patient request/kink.
tbh I always like these 'Lateral Highlight' videos as soon as they pop up, and before I have seen the episode - love the series and hope there are many more episodes ahead!
"Good NEWS!!! It's a suppository."
I thought of that as well
I knew this one straight away because that dramatic moment in ER has stuck with me about how much misunderstandings can happen and something so simple can easily be deadly. Plus i learned some Spanish.
so much good content coming out today!
funny. I never watched ER religiously but would catch an episode here and there. This question is the only scene I can remember from that show. It stuck with me for some reason.
I remember seeing that episode, so I had fun watching the guys struggle to find the answer while actually ALMOST getting it very quickly.
I remember this on ER as being with a child's medicine.
My initial guess was that it said "take with food" so she took her meds with every meal and snack. Once Anna confirmed it was 11 instead of 1, I guessed that the instructions read "Take 1 1mg pill per day" and she misread it as "Take 11mg pill per day". Alas the actual answer made a lot more sense than both of those theories.
Anna was not amused by Scott's joke.
I can live with occasional lame joke falling flat, but Bill just didn't know when to stop interrupting people.
From an American Prescription Standards perspective (Joint Commission on Healthcare) the Prescription was written incorrectly. No pharmacist IRL would let that label get actually used.
I love the music at the end, it's long enough for me to reach my keyboard, exit fullscreen and smash this LIKE button. Thanks for your great videos
And here I was expecting it to be a speck of dirt turning "Take 1 tablet every 24 hours" into "Take 1 tablet every 2.4 hours". Never would have made the connection in the video.
I thought it was a case of the pharmacy having a silly name like "Take 10", so when the pharmacy name was printed in the instructions, she got confused, and thought it was two separate instructions.
I’d like to see the full sentence in context because would a patient really read a sentence/paragraph in full English then replace one word with its Spanish alternative if it wasn’t a tv show
I think it’s more plausible that she thought English and Spanish had the word “once” in common. Romance languages have similar or even the same words sometimes, and English has many loan words (or words that originated in other languages).
This has happened at least once in reality. If one isn't very fluent in another language, it's easy to just skim along and think "Oh, it's the same word in both languages. Okay."
@@vitorluiz7538 If you can read that sentence and understand it, you will know the word once and/or eleven and if you cannot read that sentence you would not assume a word that looks the same will mean the same. False friends are super common and people who speak more than one language know that. For example; eventually (English) means something will happen at some point in the future, eventueel (Dutch) means something might be an option at some point.
@@AnnekeOosterink I don’t remember the context fully since it’s been multiple months, but I think assuming a similar word would have the same meaning is a more likely assumption than assuming they don’t. Yes, people ought to be careful of false friends, but are they?
Finally got it from reading the subtitles just before they got it.
Was convinced this was going to be something along the lines of "Take 1 1 time(s) per day”
I'm reminded of an old Benny Hill joke about a guy who tried to kill himself by taking a whole bottle of aspirin, "But after he took the first two he felt better".
There's an episode of The Odd Couple that had a similar label confusion. Felix was supposed to feed his pet parrot one drop of medicine every four hours, and he gave it four drop every hour. Don't worry, it only dropped into a coma, woke up, and was never mentioned again.
At 1:41, Bill stumbles onto the answer, but the gang veers right off immediately.
I thought this was going to be that it said "once every 24 hours" and the patient misread it as "every 2-4 hours"
Once someone said "once", I had to think of "onze" in French, but I wasn't aware of "once" in Spanish.
I thought it was going to be that the label said "Take 1 1mg per day"
I knew this one instantly, but I misremembered it as "dose" (doce) being interpreted as twelve and the normal dose being two. "Once" makes so much more sense... but how funny is it that there are so many things on a pill bottle that could be misinterpreted as Spanish numbers.
First guess-she misread “Take one every 24 hours” as “Take one every 2-4 hours”
As someone who knows how to count in Spanish and loves puns, I'm ashamed that I didn't get this one... 😄
that's a great pun.
You can also only buy 2 packets of paracetamol / iburprofen at a time = about 24 pills total
Alguien más gritando ONCE a la pantalla? 😂
My initial guess was that the pills came in a eleven-pill blister pack, the instructions said "Take one per day," and she took the entire blister pack of pills over the course of the day. But the real answer was much more satisfying.
I was thinking "Take 1 1x/day" could be interpreted as "Take 11x/day"
Not breaking the Geneva Convention this time.
This is a real thing and why medication now has to put the numeral digit along with the instructions of once(1), twice(2), etc
I was absolutely certain it was “Take 1 1x a day”
Ironically, ONCE is also the Spanish Association of Blind Citizens.
I was gonna guess at "11 Pills, Take once a day"
You can get bottles of 100 pills of painkillers in Europe, however only on a prescription as far as I'm aware.
Wow, I think that's actually true: I don't believe anyone has ever completely cracked on the Lateral show.
I thought it might have been Roman numerals 'Take x1 per day'
I thought it had to do with the slash. Like it was written like this : Take 1/D
That's a stretch but it may happen depending on the text police, the print and some misunderstading of the slash by the patient... ?
Here was me thinking she mixed up hourly and orally
Because eleven eggs is once enough.
I saw this episode. So I knew the answer right away. And pharmacies these days are careful now to use numerals rather than words: Take 1 tablet daily.
I was thinking it could be take once per day -> take oUnce per day
From the start, my assumption is that the prescription was written in a way that was correct, but could be read incorrectly.
E.g, a "U" as shorthand for units but being read as a "0".
6:02 - Did =the script say "Take 1/day" and she read that as "Take 11day"?
The thumbnail does not depict the cross in red: a callback to episode 29.
I can also imagine someone young who's grown up surrounded by abbreviated text misinterpreting "Take 2/day" with "Take today"..
That was my first guess at least, where the prescription is correct but got misinterpreted and a pack of 12 would result in 10 more than required
Aaaaaa
4:44 Oncé! 🤞🏼
Brilliant! : )
And I never could understand how the chemist could read the doctor's handwriting!
(It must be a universal ailment. A man I know who is not a doctor but is married to one, once apologised for a handwritten note. "Sorry," he said, "I've got doctors' handwriting.")
I remember this episode! ("once" is spanish for 11 I think). I had confused this for House in my mind
I also thought House rather than ER for this plot line!
Unfortunately your comment was on the top so you kind of spoiled it for me... 😥
I’d sure hope you remember this episode it came out on Friday
This mistake is based on a real-world mistake that a mother made, not surprising that it popped up on different shows.
@@loesdevries152 Watch video then read comments...
Except that in reality American prescription labels wouldn't say "take once per day," they would say "take one tablet by mouth daily."
I think the prescription was written out.
Are all American prescription labels really standardised to that degree of precision? Because I know for a fact that British ones are all over the place.
@@Seth9809 On a box or bottle given to the patient? That seems unlikely. Labels seem to always be printed, with sometimes stickers for common warnings ("don't use with alcohol" and such).
How did I not get this!? I'm learning Spanish and literally just reviewed numbers! Guess the English pronunciation led me down the wrong track.
Also 2nd comment I think.
I miss ER.
I thought I had this one figured out. I thought the pills were called NCE and she read it as Take 10 NCE per day
I'm guessing the "per day" was abbreviated (or not present at all), because no one would interpret "once" as Spanish while seeing "per day" instead of "[veces] al dia".
I kinda figured it out but I was thinking about French instead of Spanish
As soon as she said "it was supposed to be 'take once a day'" I figured it out, thanks to my High School Spanish of 40+ years ago.
My guess was "take 1 1 times per day". That isn't how rx's are written, but the show's writers could have fudged it.
"Tuberculosis": gets mentioned
*John Green Fans Assemble*
I got it at 4:07 when Anna emphasized "take *once* a day" and immediately had to pause and facepalm, yelling, "SHE'S SPANISH! 🤦♂" I need to see this episode, though, because when you see "take per day", or even just "day", you should realize it's in English, right? Otherwise it would say "toma once por día", right?
(Also, it continues to amuse me how Europeans speaking Spanish use the "th" for all the z/s/c sounds, while you never hear that in the Americas. I guess it's that Catalan influence nearby, eh?)
Wait, tuberculosis? This isn't vlogbrothers or John Greens shorts?
My guess
Instructions say 'take 1 every 12 hours' but due to bad printing or simply being misread she thinks it says 'take on every 2 hours'
💗
👍👍
Towards the end I thought she was Italian and interpreted x1 (times 1) as eleven in Roman numerals.
I thought it has something to do with the Chinese word of 10 being written
I dont understand the suppositories joke
they're pills you take through your butt
1:41, prediction once could be read in Spanish. Once is 11, ten more than 1
And I'm sitting here, a jar of 100 ibuprofen pills close by, with the lid being harder to close than open. And that's EU. But you can't really overdose on that.
I am not necessarily the target audience here, but it took me until 6:30 to get this, and... I should have gotten it quicker.
I assumed it was "x 1", which she misread as Roman numerals.
Oh man once = 11 in Spanish, so it had to been that the reader was Spanish or spoke Spanish and thought that once a day literally meant take 11 times per day. It has to be
take 1 1 times per day?
damn, i speak spanish but i didn't get it, probably because i don't read in spanish very often so i didn't make the connection lol
Take at 11 o' clock.
Initial thoughts: the direction was to take N pills with every meal, and she had more than the standard number of meals per day, like Hobbits do. Could be a similar thing with "before bed", "when waking up", etc. But that sounds not Lateral enough, same for a confusion between different medication, taking it herself and from the nurse, or medical error.
Maybe she travelled through timezones a lot (e.g. for multiple, chained, New Year celebrations), and had to take pills at certain times or every few hours.
Guess at the start: She was traveling internationally?