Quick update

Just a quick update from my Saturday night shift since I'm working again tonight and need to take a nap.  Weekend night shifts are invariably busy, and this one was no exception.  It has to be a little tough on the attendings; there are three of them and probably ten or twelve students / mid-level providers / residents that they have to supervise and take report from, and they have to see all of the patients who come through.  Boy do they keep busy...

Anyway, it was a fun night.  I saw six patients, one of whom was signed out to me, one who I sort of stumbled into taking over from the previous shift, and four whom I picked up on my own.  The ones I picked up included a young kid with a respiratory virus (admitted), a kid who'd swallowed a penny and had enough bad luck that it stuck in his esophagus (sent to the OR and discharged from PACU), a kid with a headache who'd fallen out of bed that morning whose mom was concerned that it was a head injury (examined and discharged), and a young kid with a 3 day history of fevers to 104 who looked happy as a clam (worked up for UTI and discharged; her parents were miffed about the wait but oh well).  The other two patients...well, there's a story behind those, but I won't get into it now.  Suffice it to say that I learned two things:
1) When you're leaving, sign out ALL your patients to the person relieving you; otherwise, when the attending asks me about the patient that you forgot to sign out to me, I will have no idea who or what she's talking about.
2) If you did a history and physical on a patient before signing him/her out to me, take ten minutes and write a note.  Otherwise, when I go back at 2 in the morning, an hour after my shift was supposed to end, to addend the note with the radiology / lab findings and final disposition, I will look through the list of notes twice more after not seeing it the first time, shake my head in disbelief, mutter a string of curses (which I don't do often, just in case you're not aware), and ask the intern sitting next to me if she has any thoughts on how the handle the situation.  It will ultimately result in there being ZERO documentation of any H&P on the patient, repeated comments in my note that I didn't do a history or physical because the patient was signed out to me, and a fuming blog post on the subject from an annoyed colleague (yes, that would be me).  Ahem.  Rant over.

Anyway, I'll try to give a few more details tomorrow, but if yesterday is any indication of how I'll be feeling, it might end up being postponed again.  We'll see.  Till next time, peace and God bless!