A needle goes into her leg for medications while we continue with CPR. The monitor shows no heartbeat at all. It’s a well-practised drill. We know what to do and we do it: chest compressions, adrenaline in, a tube in the airway to breathe for her, more adrenaline. A bit more of this, more of that. We go for twenty minutes, maybe thirty, there’s no heartbeat; we’re not winning. Ten more minutes . . . this is bad, very bad.
Watch Dr Simon Judkins re-tell Everything we can:
Everything we can by Dr Simon Judkins appears in EMERGENCY: Real Stories from Australia’s ED Doctors, available now from Penguin Books Australia.