RESUS!

In the hospital, when someone shouts "RESUS!", it means get your ass into gear and start CPR. The important thing to know is that you cannot perform CPR on someone who is alive. They HAVE to be dead - which apparently, some fully trained nurses don't even know.

So there I am, working in a Medical ward. I heard "RESUS!" and start running to the room like a child hopped up on cocaine, only to find one of the highest ranked nurses performing CPR on a patient who was very much alive. The sight of a nurse, sweating and puffing while performing sub-standard CPR on a live patient who is trying to fight her off is an image that makes me sleep well at night.

Trust me, someone putting their full weight (and she wasn't a small girl) behind their hands, performing chest compressions on your sternum at a rate of around 100 pumps per minute, is fucking painful.

Afterward, the nurses all celebrated (in the form of an extended tea break), the fact that the patient survived. I didn't have the heart to inform them that the patient had been alive all along.