Wednesday, May 5, 2010

measure by measure

I think one of the hardest things about working really long hours is the inability to tell how things are going. Are you having a good day? A bad day? If you're working 13+ hours, that's plenty of time to have my normal equivalent of 2 bad days and 1 good day. So when I get home at night and Brandon or Kamna asks me how things went I just want to shrug. Who knows if it was good or bad?


There was a good part where I was with the senior fellow and he let me close three different patients.


There was a bad part where the junior fellow was freaking out and super mad at everyone in the OR. (This had originally started off as a great thing for me, as she was not on time for the beginning of the surgery and the ninja-like attending showed up and I got to be first assist for 15 blessed minutes. Which was so fun! Because she (junior fellow) never lets me do anything, not even close, so it felt like revenge.) She's sorta just one of those poisonous personalities - what can you do? I told someone to call her, but I was already scrubbed in.


There was a good part where my prerounding finally took less than 30 minutes.(Yeah yeah, all I do is copy down vitals, but reading that chart was baffling, and more so that early in the morning. And more so if the nurses were stealing them and hiding from me - which they weren't- but it really seemed like they were sometimes.)


There was a bad part when I showed up this morning at the crack of dawn (earlier than the crack of dawn) and my intern was prerounding on MY patients. Okay, look, that's fine. If you want to do it you can do it. But you had better TELL ME so that I don't have to be there at 445, arghahhgkadjjfsriesirewnawn!!!!!


Anyway. A day in the life. There were about 20 other things that happened that day, but see? The day is long. I am tired.