I stepped out of the car into the rain. The hospital looked grand, state of the art, impressive. A far cry from my own district general hospital 3 hours away. I walked into the building and followed signs for the intensive care department. As I walked into the immaculate unit, I saw a family gathered around a patient’s bedside.
The patient was a 65-year-old man, requiring intubation and ventilation after cardiac arrest. His history sheet described sudden-onset chest pain followed by collapse and bystander cardiopulmonary resuscitation with a 20-minute downtime. The ambulance crew had arrived and identified a shockable rhythm; return of spontaneous circulation was achieved after delivery of 2 shocks. There were no electrocardiogram changes necessitating an immediate trip to the catheterization laboratory, so he was taken to intensive care. It was a story I knew well, but this time, it was my uncle.