Never know how heavily to edit these, actually. Possibly interesting for some of you to see the inner workings of rostering an anaesthetic department? Or not? Feedback welcome…
From: Kirsty Jordan
Sent: Friday, 29 May 2015 2:38 PM
To: Wellington Anaesthesia All Staff
Subject: Bucket
Hi All,
Our local paper had a picture of my daughters’ clever friend, last seen discussing her classes trip to university on Stuff a fortnight ago, having just won a national Chinese language competition. She gets to travel to China in a few weeks time on an all expenses paid trip to compete in the world championships. I realize now this is the true purpose of those posh private schools – so that your children can be outshone on a whole different level. One of my daughters confessed to me last night that she had always thought the Warehouse was where everyone gets a bucket. This would explain her bemused looks whenever we left the Red Shed in her childhood – presumably bucketless.
Well, the week started on a sad note, with the news that not all our part 2 candidates had managed to pass their exams. These exams are just torture, aren’t they? Harder than landing a 747 on the head of a pin, or taking a tasteful topless selfie. The sooner they invent a more humane method of gatekeeping, the happier I’ll be. At the end of this week we will be exactly half way through the RMO year, so the final week for some of our juniors, moving off to pastures new. There will also be a lot of new faces around the following week. In fact I ended up at short notice with much fewer RMOs than I was anticipating this week, hence the last minute shuffling of the schedule that you may have noticed. On the plus side, Dr Nani T is back for a couple of days this week, and also Monday is a holiday, so it’s not all bad. Plus, the Emerald Isle has just voted in gay marriage: possibly completely irrelevant, but lovely anyway IMHO.
Monday
Aha! Tricked you. Stay away unless you must.
Wednesday
Ben has a patient with type eleven diabetes on his list – he’s only heard of four, which is two more than I had – so we await this patient with interest.
A long day has been requested for the ortho list my office partner is down for – I wonder if putting him in there was a tactical error on my part?
An extra all day urology list replaces ENT in OT 10. Debbie B, the gyne extra list huntress, is away sunning herself on a tropical island somewhere, and while the cat’s away, the other specialties are making hay. (Might have got my metaphors mixed up there somewhere ).
Thursday
The ENT list has been replaced by Upper GI. At this stage the plan is for it to stay in OT 10 but it depends on which general surgeon complains the most about needing to be in a familiar theatre. My money’s on Wicks but I hear Alex can be quite vociferous.
Kirsten’s morning spinal patient is apparently intolerant to all analgesics but you can bet he won’t tolerate pain either so she has her work cut out.
Morning vascular replaced by urology (see?)
End of run, midyear dinner tonight at the Foxglove for those lucky enough not to be working.(sigh)
Friday
Even though we’re short, we have two extra pm preassessment clinics, because Kene has four morning lists (count ‘em! Four! ) and only one that goes all day, so there’s not a lot else we can do with those anaesthetists by the time they get back into town. A warning for Dr K though: when Dr W did that extra gyne APAC they put him in a glass shoebox in womens clinics, and by the time the 180kg patient brought in her 180kg friend, there wasn’t a lot of room.
That’s it for me. Planning to spend the long weekend enjoying the last week of the Black Caps 4th place in the international test match rankings.
Cheers,
Kirsty.