Plot hole: There are always family members right in the room while the doctors are literally cutting into the patients. The family is always creating a fuss or whatever, until someone asks for them to escorted out. A real hospital would never let family members into the room while they are cracking open their loved one's chest.
Plot hole: During Season 5, the search for an ER Chief takes nearly a year and two nationwide searches, but is ultimately unsuccessful. At the beginning of Season 6, Romano is chosen as Chief of *Staff* in the blink of an eye, and Kerry is appointed as ER Chief just as quickly. Then, in Season 9, Kerry and Romano's positions are switched as though such things happen everyday. There's no way decisions of this magnitude would be made in such a brief amount of time.
Answer: A man named Paul Sobriki comes into the ER in the season 6 episode 13 " All in the Family." He is complaining of headaches, Carter and Lucy decide to rule out meningitis and do a lumber puncture. Paul struggles during the procedure and believes that both doctors are stabbing him. Lucy, who is interested in Psych thinks something is wrong with their patient mentally, but Carter is dismissive of her. She gets cross with his attitude and she calls the psych department anyway to have a look at him. Later on and near the closing 20 minutes or so of the episode, all the staff start playing loud music and get a cake which appears to be blue lol, together to party as it's Valentines Day, Carter returns from somewhere and asks where Lucy is. He goes to check one of the rooms for her and Paul Sobriki comes up behind him in the dark and stabs him twice in the lower back, he collapses and as he falls unconscious he sees Lucy on the ground also. In the next episode, Be Still My Heart (ep 14), Dr Weaver discovers them and all of the staff work to try and save them, whilst Carter survives. Lucy's wounds are fatal and suffers a pulmonary embolism as Corday and Romano try to save her. Carter is grief stricken and feels guilty about the way he treated her, he becomes addicted to painkillers and Benton, Greene all help him and book him into rehab.