Despite years of life support classes, starting with BLS in high school and then graduating to ACLS and PALS towards the end of nursing school, I never had to do compressions on a real patient. The occasional code happened on my other units but I managed to slide out of participating, and if I was involved, I gravitated towards roles such as recorder or comforting the family. I never rushed into the action. This piece comes from right after I did compressions for the first time in the CVICU. On this day my coworker in the next room had a…