What’s your #1 priority tomorrow?
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At the time of writing this article, I am about an hour and a half away before my shift officially begins. I am “on night”, meaning my shift begins from 7pm till 8am the following day, solely handling the entire Male Orthopaedic Ward (MOW) and the Paediatric Orthopaedic Ward (POW).
At the moment, there are about 6 “coming mornings” listed. “Coming mornings” are bloods that need to be taken after midnight and sent before the morning shift . This is to aid the morning shift doctors in their continuous management of the patients.
6 is a short and sweet number. I’ve experienced a night where I had around 20 or more “coming mornings”. I have no idea how I pulled it off despite being called in between to go to the emergency department and help out. That’s the Orthopaedic Posting for you. At least how the system is in the hospital that I’m currently in. The ward doctors are being called to the emergency department to carry out the active plans of the stranded patients.
Is that my number 1 priority for the following day?
Nope. More like number 2.
My number 1 priority tomorrow would be to ensure the patients’ master-list is updated and the bed allocations are ready latest by 6am.
Sounds easy.
However, you’d be surprised on how stressful it may get if the morning shift person did not update the master-list or there are new admissions in the middle of the night or the staff nurses decided to switch their beds.
Hence, I made it a point to double check the files again because not every patient is under the “General Team”. I am in the “General Team”. Some patients are under other subspecialties such as “Spine Team”, “Arthro Team” or “Advanced Trauma Team” (just to name a few). In addition to that, there are other patients lodging in the ward who are not even under the Orthopaedic Team such as Medical patients, Dental or Surgical.
Thus, it is important to ensure the correct beds are allocated among the doctors in the morning shift and not to miss any beds. It is simply unforgivable as the patient will not be reviewed by any team and hence there will be a delay in their treatment and management.
Hence, this is my number 1 priority tomorrow, closely followed by the completion of the “coming morning” bloods. Well, that and several other responsibilities that being the “on night” is responsible for.
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The Theoretical Doctor 