A defibrillation system comprising: a package containing electrodes and an electrically conductive medium residing between the electrodes, the electrodes being mutually releasably connected by the electrically conductive medium; and an apparatus for detecting at least one of handling of electrodes and removing of the electrodes from the package, the apparatus comprising: a storage memory; a clock; monitoring means configured to monitor (208, 216, 224) a magnitude of an electrical characteristic measured from an electrical circuit having an electric current path through said electrodes and said medium, the monitoring means comprising a module configured to periodically sample, according to counting of the clock, a magnitude of an electrical characteristic of an electric current in a path through said electrodes and said medium to produce samples that are stored in the storage memory; and identifying means configured to identify (224, 330, 370) an occurrence of at least one of said handling and said removing based on variation over time in said magnitude, comprising a processor configured to receive the samples and configured to identify said occurrence of at least one of said handling and said removing based on variation over time in said magnitude wherein the apparatus further is adapted to issue user prompts for operating the defibrillation system in response to the identification of said occurrence, characterized in that the processor is adapted to identify said occurrence by filtering (228, 320, 340) the samples; deriving from absolute values of the filtered samples a moving sum having a time window of predetermined length, and detecting when the moving sum exceeds a predefined threshold. a package containing electrodes and an electrically conductive medium residing between the electrodes, the electrodes being mutually releasably connected by the electrically conductive medium; and an apparatus for detecting at least one of handling of electrodes and removing of the electrodes from the package, the apparatus comprising: a storage memory; a clock; monitoring means configured to monitor (208, 216, 224) a magnitude of an electrical characteristic measured from an electrical circuit having an electric current path through said electrodes and said medium, the monitoring means comprising a module configured to periodically sample, according to counting of the clock, a magnitude of an electrical characteristic of an electric current in a path through said electrodes and said medium to produce samples that are stored in the storage memory; and identifying means configured to identify (224, 330, 370) an occurrence of at least one of said handling and said removing based on variation over time in said magnitude, comprising a processor configured to receive the samples and configured to identify said occurrence of at least one of said handling and said removing based on variation over time in said magnitude wherein the apparatus further is adapted to issue user prompts for operating the defibrillation system in response to the identification of said occurrence, a storage memory; a clock; monitoring means configured to monitor (208, 216, 224) a magnitude of an electrical characteristic measured from an electrical circuit having an electric current path through said electrodes and said medium, the monitoring means comprising a module configured to periodically sample, according to counting of the clock, a magnitude of an electrical characteristic of an electric current in a path through said electrodes and said medium to produce samples that are stored in the storage memory; and identifying means configured to identify (224, 330, 370) an occurrence of at least one of said handling and said removing based on variation over time in said magnitude, comprising a processor configured to receive the samples and configured to identify said occurrence of at least one of said handling and said removing based on variation over time in said magnitude wherein the apparatus further is adapted to issue user prompts for operating the defibrillation system in response to the identification of said occurrence,