Healing Surge

This is shamans' quick, expensive heal.

In Cataclysm (as of 4.0.3a), all healers have the following types of heals:

Quick, expensive heal: 1.5 second cast, very high mana cost, high heal value.
Inexpensive heal: 3 second cast (usually talented to 2.5), very low mana cost, low heal value.
Slow, big heal: 3 second cast (usually talented to 2.5), high mana cost, very high heal value.

The mana costs differ very slightly between classes. Two of them have the quick heal cost more than the big heal.

Priest
Quick - Flash Heal
Cheap - [spell=2050]
Big - [spell=2060]

Shaman
Quick - Healing Surge
Cheap - [spell=331]
Big - [spell=77472]

Druid
Quick - Regrowth
Cheap - [spell=50464]
Big - [spell=5185]

Paladin
Quick - Flash of Light
Cheap - [spell=635]
Big - [spell=82326]

Shaman version of Flash Heal. Heals for slightly less, costs a bit less mana.

Oh healing surge.
The nerfhammer has really hit you hard.

Healing Surge has become nearly obsolete nowadays (sadly).

In direct comparison to [spell=77472], (assuming [spell=51564], 5% Haste-buff, and the usual 916 Haste)

Healing surge has a cast-time of 1,33 seconds. It also has a high crit chance - 60% with 30% from your gear.
[spell=77472] has a cast-time of 1,71 seconds.

Due to a higher Base-healing, and a higher spellpower-coefficient, [spell=77472] will heal for a lot more.

So for making Healing Surge effective, you'd need a really urgent emergency-situation, or no tidal wave-stacks active.

Just because I like numbers and stuff:
Base Heal is 4802
Scales with 0,483% of your Spellpower (without [spell=16213] and [spell=84848])