This Is Going to Hurt: Secret Diaries of a Young Doctor

by Adam Kay

If your heart stops, you’re probably going to die. God is fairly strict on that matter. If you collapse on the street and a bystander starts cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), then your chance of survival is around 8 percent. In hospital, with trained personnel, drugs, and defibrillators, it’s only about twice that. People don’t realize quite how horrific resuscitation is—undignified, brutal, and with a fairly woeful success rate. When discussing Do Not Resuscitate orders, relatives often want “everything to be done” without truly knowing what that means. Really, the form should say, “If your mother’s heart stops, would you like us to break all her ribs and electrocute her?”