Nurses: if a degree means that much to your self-esteem why not become a doctor?

So you're lying in a hospital bed flecked with the blood of its previous occupant, your bedpan's piled higher than the Leaning Tower of Pisa, your saline drip needed changing five hours ago, and in the bed next to you a gang of men with dish-dashes and beards is trying to throttle a wounded young squaddie back from Afghanistan.

You press the call button for the 7928th time, and there at last she is, in her mortarboard and BSc gown.

"Nurse," you gasp. "You couldn't just…"

"Haemoglobin?" she...