I will be posting a series of articles in this blog about hospital life soon. Entitled Who’s Who and What’s What: Inside NHS Hospitals, it's an insider's guide to how hospitals really work. The series will attempt to inform, explain and demystify what it is that doctors, nurses and all the other clinical specialists get up to behind your back if you're unlucky enough to be admitted to hospital. 

Here are some of the topics I'll be covering...

Making sense of all the different medical and surgical specialties. 

Medical terminology and acronyms explained.

The difference between a heart attack and a cardiac arrest.

How  cardiac arrests are managed in hospital.

What you can do to manage a cardiac arrest until the emergency services arrive.

What's brainstem death? Surely you're either properly dead or still alive.

Organ donation.

What is general anaesthesia?

What happens on the Intensive Care Unit?

Why are some hospital doctors referred to as Mister and other as Doctor?

What's the difference between a radiologist and radiographer?

Why are there so many junior doctor grades? And why are juniors sometimes called trainees although now resident doctors is  the preferred term?

Hospital managers - who are they and what do they do?

What does a coroner a do?

What goes on in the doctors' mess?

How do the different areas of a hospital work?

Why does parking your car at your local hospital cost so much and why can you never find a place to park anyway?

What is being on call like and how does it relate to stress, mental and physical health problems, and burnout?

How do I see the future of the NHS?