sleep, or lack thereof

night calls are every intern's nightmare.

(a call is when you work the day from 7 am to 5 pm, start call at 5 pm, work through the night till 8 am next morning when call ends, then carry on with day work till 5 pm again. if you're lucky you get a post-call and get to leave around 12 plus at noon)

6 months into my intern year, i must admit that i'm more used to calls now, but that doesn't mean i like them any more.

of course, there are exceptions to any rule, and i have to say that i really really loved labour ward calls, esp when there are caesars aplenty!!!! :D nothing i love better than going in for a caesar :D :D :D time seems to fly when i'm in the OG OT

i used to think A&E calls for ortho weren't too bad - until monday night.
when my resident called me in a panic 15 min before my call was officially supposed to start, i knew things were bad. what i didn't realised was HOW bad.

when i hauled my arse down to the A&E, there was an entire STACK of cases waiting to be seen in the ortho room. oh dear!!!! (the usual is about 3 to 4 cases, maximum!)
and there were 3 patients waiting to be admitted - means i had to clerk them in the A&E or run back to the ward to admit them - and the ward is very very far away!

the worst was doing a blood culture in the A&E - no sterile gloves, no culture set. just swab the area 10 times with alcohol swabs and do a no-touch technique and pray like anything that it won't be contaminated. EEKS!

thank goodness for my very enthusiastic students, who's energy gave aging me a boost through the night. they were chirpy and perky and well, everything i was not. hahaha. they even kindly bought me a drink! :D yeyy!
but really, seeing their energy gave me a boost. i remember how enthusiastic i was back then. every plug to set, every blood to draw, every backslab to prepare, was like a diamond. i craved the clinical aspect of medicine like bees to pollen (not honey hahaha!).
getting to play doctor as a student was the BEST THING EVER! hehe.
now, sadly, i am getting old and jaded. every new case that comes in, i just try to clerk it as passably as possible, every plug i set, just needs to work, every blood i draw just needs to be enough. the less work, the better!
so really, i do owe alot to my students - their enthusiasm helped me pass the night! :D finally packed them off to sleep at 515 am. goodness!

my poor resident and i didn't have time for dinner, we worked non-stop from 5 pm to 530 am. when we both finally sat down at 530 am, i fell asleep whilst she called my senior resident for some advice regarding the admissions. oh dear.
must have looked an awful sight sleeping in the ED! :\
too nauseated to eat breakfast and lunch the next day, left hospital at 2 pm and crashed at home promptly.

but call is over! next one on sunday- ward call. EURGHHHHHHHH!!!!

failed

exam results are out, and i am not amongst the list of those who passed.
but i'm alright, i know i didn't study as hard as i should have, and this result is entirely my own doing. i will make sure i study a lot harder the next time round! :)

survived my passive calls so far, v happy :D
passives are awful calls. you get a million calls for post-op reviews, you take endless bloods, you see all the patients that cannot sleep/itchy toes/cannot pee/cannot BO/bleeding/chest pain/SOB/dizziness/nausea/pain pain pain/ etccc.
ARGHHHHHHH.
medicine is not my strong suit, clearly!
diagnosed a patient with nosocomial pneumonia my last call, but didn't start tazocin as nurses had just given augmentin 1 hour ago. wrote in casenotes to start tazo cm, and passed over to the ward HO next morning, but the attending refused to do anything for patient as patient appears well. OH DEARIE ME :( :( :(
i can only hope that the patient pulls through! :\ will go back and have a look at him another day.

dealt with a VVVVIP patient (some foreign politician's relative, prof's personal private patient), that my resident was ordered to clerk personally and take bloods from. hahaha.
thankfully she was very nice :)
the funniest thing was when my resident tourniqued her hand, stared at it in horror and told me: "i haven't taken blood in a damn long time", right in front of the patient! OH DEARIE ME.
thankfully patient does not understand english. HAHAHAHA!
luckily i set her plug, so all was well and good :D

my lovely senior resident overheard me whining to another intern about how crappy life in ortho is, and said:" still complaining??" hahahaha oops!

more rants about private and subsidised care later on!