Health & Prevention

Red Bags, Blue Bloods

Posted by Carol Layton in category Medication Management Priority #1: Prevention on July 25, 2012

Tom Selleck has made a career by mastering understated bravado. It’s rare to see one of his characters turn white with fear. But in “What About Thanksgiving?”—a season-two episode of the CBS drama, Blue Bloods, Selleck as police commissioner Frank Reagan did just that.

What made Selleck’s lip quiver and blood drain from his face? His rookie son undercover and off the grid with the mafia? An impending biological threat to the city’s subways? Nope. Just a matter-of-fact ER physician asking Commissioner Reagan what medicines his father was taking.

Selleck looked like he’d taken one to the gut as he stammered a helpless, “I should know.” At that moment, the quintessential hero was powerless to help one dearest to him—his own beloved father. It looked as though his ignorance about his dad's medicines might hurt his chances to survive the heart attack. The family scrambled to call the pharmacy to find out if grandpa was on blood thinners so that emergency surgery could be performed.

If great-grandpa Reagan had only had an NCBAM Red Bag and made his family aware of it! It would have been in a central location and the granddaughter-in-law would have known to give it to emergency responders. The doctors would have been privy to his complete list of prescriptions before he even rolled into the ER.

This short scene wasn’t critical to the story line so I suspect the producers of Blue Bloods were taking an opportunity to educate viewers about medication mismanagement—the number-one risk to the health of aging adults over 65.

Learn more here how Red Bags can save lives.