WILTIMS #367: 24 hour call - Part 1

Today is my first 24 hour call shift and, since [knock on wood] things aren't very busy yet, I thought I'd try to multiple updates throughout the day. Though, if things continue to be this subdued [knocks again], it is likely to be a good deal less than 24 hours until someone sends me home out of pity [knocking intensifies].

05:07 - Apparently, even The City That Never Sleeps nods off at 5am on a Sunday. I never thought I'd see an empty subway car; usually there is at least a homeless person napping in the corner.

07:30 - After arriving at six, the day residents and I got report from the overnight resident. Only one woman is in L&D right now. She's still a few months preterm, but her preeclampsia (high blood pressure and usually kidney dysfunction) and past medical history have led to her being admitted under observation. There was talk overnight of doing a c-section on her today, but the residents are doubtful and are waiting for the attending to arrive to see his opinion.

The intern (1st-year resident) and I then went and did rounds on the maternity ward patients. Nothing out of the ordinary; some aches and pains, but mostly irritation at us for waking them up. It was nice to see the tiny newborns again after doing newborn nursery last month on Peds. There's always two types of doctors working on maternity wards, pediatricians and obstetricians. It's weird to now be on the latter service, where the mom is my primary concern.

One of the women needed staples removed from her c-section incision, so we grabbed some medical staple removers and popped those out. The resident showed me how to do it on the first few and then I took over. As usual, if they are letting me do something, it's because a well trained monkey could do it, but it was still cool to get to do something.

11:00 - The attending finally arrived at about 08:30 and agreed that the woman in L&D didn't need a cesarean today, unless something changes for the worse. We'll keep her overnight to make sure though. The attending was excited that the low patient count would mean he gets to watch some football later, but he warned that, since it was slow yesterday too, it was bound to pick-up today.

The peds/NICU team came down to do joint morning rounds on the L&D patient. Everyone needs to be ready in case our one patient becomes two. But that's not likely today, so it was a very quick meeting.

After just hanging out with the doctors and midwife for a while, I was given the super-exciting task of walking some discharge paperwork over to the maternity ward. After that, I studied for a while and was asked repeatedly if I wanted to take a breakfast/coffee/lunch break. I eventually gave in, muched on my lunch and started writing this.

To be continued...