I’ve had a very interesting day, and I’m just trying to get to grips with it from the point of view of the sort of day other people I’ve been in contact with have been having.
I’m currently on call for acute work at the hospital. My call started at 8 am and will finish tomorrow morning at 8. I had a scheduled in person session for five hours that started at 12:30 – assuming I hadn’t already been called in – and I left home shortly after 11:30 on my bicycle to get there.
I stopped at a popular brunch stop on the way in, a place where they roast their own coffee. It was heaving. There were people everywhere. I joined a random queue of people, hoping it was the right one to buy a takeaway sandwich. The young woman working the till was dealing with a couple who were trying to pay for their meals but there seemed to be a problem finding their bill. “We were sitting over there. Look! Another couple are already sitting in our places.” “Was that two flat whites?” “No, I had a long black, and what was your order, darling?” “A latte” In the meantime, a long queue was steadily forming behind me. Eventually the harassed server went to find her supervisor, while the rest of us grumbled.
Eventually the problem was sorted and it was my turn. I ordered my sandwich and then mentioned how busy it was. “Oh, its always like this!’ she said.
I cycled into work, and three theatres were running. We’d had three men come in that morning with head injuries due to violence. Two had already had their brains decompressed by removal of a large piece of skull, and the third was about to begin his surgery for the same thing. I was all coffeed up and ready to take over the anaesthetic management, in tandem with my two experienced junior colleagues. The afternoon progressed well, apart from when the anaesthetist in charge of the third theatre came down acutely unwell with puking, which we had to scramble to find cover for. It wasn’t until the end of the third craniectomy that the junior surgeon revealed that she’d been on duty since yesterday, and had only had one hour’s sleep. The surgical trainee rosters are a real throwback, I’ve never had to work like that in my life.*
When we dropped our last neurosurgical patient off to ICU, it was mayhem in there. It was stuffed to the gunnels. There were no staff sitting around twiddling their thumbs, that was for sure. Everyone was busy.
At the end of my on site shift, I went down to the carpark where I could overhear a group of young people having an angry conversation outside the hospital entrance. There was lots of swearing that I will spare you, but it was clear that they had wanted to visit someone in the hospital but had been refused entrance for some reason. I wonder if they were connected to the young men we’d been looking after in theatre?
So, a fraught day. I was in my element, really, although it’s taken me years to get this comfortable and confident in my work. All in all I’d rather be doing what I was doing than what anyone in the busy cafe was doing, or the junior surgeon, and most especially I wouldn’t like to be in the shoes of anyone close to our trauma victims.
Of course, there’s another option: having a Saturday of R and R like any normal person. And most of my weekends are like that. But wouldn’t it be dull to never have any excitement? NB If I get called in overnight I’m going to be much less upbeat about my job. Rest assured, I have no regrets about giving up my weekends on call. Time for someone else to have some fun.
ps A friend is currently in ED with his son who accidentally got smacked in the face during some sporting fixture. Apparently it’s crazy busy there too. Seventy people waiting to be seen, lots of shouting and abuse of staff. Give me my safe little posi (sp?) in theatre any day!
*This is a lie! What was I thinking? Of course working weekends on call from 8 am Saturday to 8 am Monday I sometimes was in for many hours at a time overnight, and would be quite sleep deprived by Monday. Clearly I’m in denial.