Awesome / Untold Stories of the E.R.

• One nurse actually dragged a doctor who had been shot in the head, from a gunman in the hospital, to a side room while the gunman was still running around. Then he went back out for a gurney.
• When there was no plastic surgeon available to reconstruct a patient's mangled face, the ER doctor had no choice but to do it himself, including repairing a severed facial muscle. Despite having sore arms and a sore back from doing photography the day before, he did such a good job on both procedures that the actual plastic surgeon was impressed, and the patient healed completely, with almost no trace of her horrific injury.
• In "Minutes to Live", a stabbing victim flatlined before the surgeon could arrive, so the ER doctor had to perform a thoracotomy to diagnose and treat a case of cardiac tamponade (in which the sac around the heart fills with fluid and starts putting too much pressure on the heart). After relieving the pressure, the doctor had to find a way to stem the bleeding, but knew that stitches would take too long. So she temporarily plugged the hole using two inflated Foley catheters, which kept the patient alive until the surgeon got there.
• In "Man with Two Faces", the eponymous patient had schizophrenia and hadn't been taking his meds, but he was still lucid and perceptive enough to know and communicate how long he'd had his cough, how long his face had looked different from normal, and how much weight he'd lost recently. He also had the forethought to bring his medication (which he wasn't even taking at the time), and the presence of mind to think to show the doctor his driver's license to prove that his facial transformation wasn't just a delusion. That's more useful information than many mentally healthy patients on this show manage to cough up, even when questioned extensively.
• In "Campstove Stuffing", the Chief of Orthopedics brings his wife in with severe rectal bleeding and abdominal pain. He believes he knows what's wrong, and tries to pressure the brand new attending ER doctor to send her straight to surgery instead of running tests to confirm the diagnosis. And the OR has already been booked, so the ER doctor also has the Chief of Surgery and other surgical staff breathing down his neck about the delay. Despite being fresh meat, and despite the risk of delaying treatment and pissing off all these people for nothing, he insists on doing things by the book rather than rushing into treatment prematurely. This is awesome enough just for how much guts it takes to stand your ground in that situation, but is all the more awesome for being the right call: He eventually discovers that the patient is not bleeding at all, but is having diarrhea stained red from beets she had eaten. His refusal to surrender to Screw the Rules, I Have Connections! saved the patient from unnecessary surgery, distinguished himself to the entire ER, and put the Chief of Orthopedics in his place.
• One episode features a grumpy old man who can't seem to go five seconds without making misogynistic comments directed at the female staff members. ("What is this, a sewing circle? Why aren't you all at home, where you belong?") When he meets Dr. Drake, who is male, he barks, "You've got some pretty uppity girls running this place! Pretty pathetic if you ask me!" Dr. Drake shoots back, "Well I didn't ask you, and this is my staff, so please, stop being rude to them, starting right now." Benevolent Boss for the win!
• The teenage girl who swallowed a fork in "Deadly Diagnosis" was a real trouper. She was at the hospital all by herself, without even her parents there to comfort her, she had a fork stuck in her throat, she couldn't speak or swallow for fear of moving the fork, and she had to watch a team of doctors discuss her case and her treatment options without being able to react or ask any questions. Aside from a terrified expression and the occasional tear streaming down her face, she managed to remain calm and perfectly still, and cooperated with the doctor's instructions to the best of her ability.
  • Dr. Lutsky, who treated her, also deserves mention. It was his first day as an actual doctor, and ultimately he ended up having only a 30-second window to remove the fork. He lost his grip on it the first time, but with only 20 seconds left, he got a firmer grip on the fork and pulled it out without damaging her airway or esophagus.
• The eponymous case in "Deadly Diagnosis" was a teenage girl whose lungs were losing function due to a progressive strep infection. Nothing the doctors tried was working to keep her oxygen levels up. They decided on an unprecedented technique of using an extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine, which would remove her blood, oxygenate it, and pump it back in. ECMO is generally only indicated for young children, and they weren't sure if it would work on someone of this girl's size and age. But their Crazy Enough to Work scheme worked, and she made a full recovery.
• In "Blackout", a convict is brought in unconscious. The guard understandably suspects he's faking it but the doctor decides to give him the benefit of the doubt since he's been like that for 5 hours and his tests suggest he's unconscious. When brought in for a CAT scan, the inmate reveals he was faking it and holds the guards and radiologist hostage. The doctor pulls a Miles Gloriosus and charges into the CAT scan room and blacks out. When he wakes up it's revealed what had happened: The doctor had opened the door knocking over the convict and everyone dogpiles him. The nurse who told him about the hostage situation had grabbed a tranquilizer and used it on the pinned down inmate.