Salam wa aleikum (Peace be upon you)

Another quiet day on the unit today. We had a total of six empty beds, something that would never happen back in Calgary. I learned today that patients don't have goals of care designations here.  I'll explain what this is for those who don't know: goals of care are basically what interventions you do or do not want done to you if your heart stops of if you stop breathing. For example, an R1 designation means you want all possible interventions to save your life while a C2 designation means you only want your symptoms controlled and that's it. No chest compressions. No intubation. No surgery. In Qatar, if a person passes away, CPR is performed for up to two hours or until the family says stop, regardless of the person's age or diagnosis. I was told this was because Muslims believe that a person dies when it's god's will so if they can be saved, they're saved.  I also learned that when a Qatari dies, they are buried by sundown that same day, there is no viewing. If a person dies during the night then they have to be buried before sunrise the next morning.

And now for a funny story:

If you go and see an America movie here, they censor the love scenes by blacking out the screen and muting the sound until it's over. But one time, during a screening of The Lucky One,  they blacked the screen but forgot to mute the sound. So people could hear the love scene but not see it. My colleague said that everybody in the theatre was cheering.