4

You Deal With Lots Of Zombified Flesh

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"I was admitting an older man who had been neglecting himself at home and had become unwell," recalls Samantha. This case, as far as the hospital knew, had as much to do with social issues as any kind of medical care they were prepared to provide. But they had to get to the bottom of it, and Samantha was tasked with starting the guy off by getting him undressed and into the shower. "I pulled off the sock on his left foot and nearly fell over. All the way up his foot and to just above his ankle the tissue had at some point died and had been left for so long that it had the appearance of a mummified limb connected to a healthy leg."

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3

Sometimes, The Work Sounds Like Witchcraft

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When the hospital's usual arsenal of body science produces nothing, they turn themselves next toward the weird stuff. Now, the weird stuff isn't total nonsense. Ben in particular resents the phrase "alternative treatments": "When I hear the term, my gut reaction is 'treatment that doesn't work, but it hasn't been researched, so we can say it might.' When things work and we have the studies to prove it, we just call it 'treatment.'" But these methods often sound like they're stolen from tribal shamans who live in another century and possibly on another planet.

An old lady with poor circulation once knocked her leg and got a sore the width of a fist and a couple inches deep. When Samantha's team couldn't treat the injury with normal methods, they dropped a pile of maggots on her. "It's much more precise than surgical intervention to remove necrotic tissue and can stimulate healing," says Samantha. It also involves worms eating you, which reportedly hurts. But at least the maggots are specially bred in a hospital lab, so no one has to be scared of dumping new worm germs into the leg hole.

2

Caring For Victims Of Crime Is Tricky

When Ben first saw the emergency contraceptive drug Plan B in the medicine room, he laughed. "Who the fuck thinks plan B is an emergency?" he says. "Then it hit me. 'Oh. Oooooooooh. Awwwwww noooooooo.'" Once he learned a little more, he thought of going into forensic nursing and becoming a sexual assault nurse examiner, collecting rape evidence for trials and guiding victims through the process. Then, once he learned more still, he realized a 200-pound, 5-foot-11, tattooed guy like him wouldn't be the best person to handle anyone -- female or male -- who finds themselves in that situation.

But all nurses eventually end up treating victims of some kind. Kid looks like her father is beating her? It's time to call the social worker (not the cops), and the nurse never hears what happens next because privacy laws forbid following up. Senior citizen looks like his kid is beating him? Then it's time to call an agency devoted to elder abuse. Ben recalls one old man who came in dehydrated and malnourished, his whole lower body covered in sores from lying in his own mushy feces. This guy, Ben was allowed to follow up on, and he wound up healthy enough and happy a couple months later in a well-run state nursing home.

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The social workers may or may not call the police -- but that's their department. The hospital will never call the police for anything short of a gunshot wound. "Unless they tell us that they want to call the police," says Samantha, "we can't break confidentiality. Even with domestic violence or rape." Ben routinely gets calls from police. He cooperates just fine when they need a report about a traffic accident or something similar, but other times, they ask him for health records, to confirm suspects' whereabouts, or to hold patients in custody. He just replies that he has no obligation to assist them.

1

Resuscitation Doesn't Look Like It Does On TV

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As we've mentioned before, the first crucial difference between CPR as done on a TV hospital drama versus real life is that the latter is far more violent. If done right, you're going to break ribs -- you're trying to compress the heart through a cage made of bone. In a movie or TV show they're doing gentle compressions as not to abuse the actor or stunt person; that's why they're able to do things like give chest compressions to a patient on a stretcher. That doesn't happen in real life. Stretchers are too flimsy -- you'd just be bending the stretcher and watching it bounce back while the patient remains unchanged and quietly dies.

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The force involved is also hugely tiring on the nurse, which makes it impossible to keep up for an extended length of time. "You are trying to compress the chest about an inch and a half in," says Ben. "After compressing someone for two minutes, you are drained. Do that for five more rounds, and your back and arms are practically useless." In the hospital, they don't even do compressions by hand most of the time. They start off by hand, but then they pass the job off to the chest-squeezing robot. And if that seems too impersonal for your sexy nurse fantasy, here's more bad news: Nurses don't do mouth-to-mouth. That's pointless compared to chest stuff, and the chance of you throwing up into their mouth is too high.

But, really, getting felt up by a killer robot is the ultimate fantasy.

When patients flatline, nurses don't reach for those shock pads. The defibrillator resets an irregular pulse; it can't restart a stopped one. But they try plenty of other procedures -- they don't give up in 30 seconds like on television and start sobbing about how "it never gets easier!" They'll put in an IV. They'll drill a hole into the bone for more meds. They won't call a death before at least 15 minutes pass without a heartbeat.

And, surprisingly, nurses want family members in the room during this whole process, despite all the infection and interference you'd think they'd bring. "Families that are watching stay the hell out of your way," Ben explains. "They don't want to be a distraction; they want you at the peak of your game just as much as you do. They are not at all critical. Yes, they are crying and emotional about the situation, but when they can actually see you go for 30 minutes trying to resuscitate their loved one, they only have respect for you."

Ryan Menezes is an editor and interviewer here at Cracked. Follow him on Twitter for stuff cut from articles and other things no one should see.

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