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My first “on-night” shift or night shift in General Paediatrics or just within the Paediatrics Department was in the General Paediatrics Ward 2B.
It was three days prior to me flying home and I was looking forward to it. Besides, after having just “off-tagged”, I was due to go on a night shift with my mentor.
I arrived at the ward at 6pm, the ward was turning from “active” to “passive”. Basically, till 12 midnight, there would be new patients admitting.
Upon arriving, I was told that there is a patient who was frequently having frequent hypoglycaemic episode. She was not fasting. The moment her blood sugar profile reached to a certain value, I would need to inform the medical officer and be on standby and to aspirate about 20ml of blood from a little girl barely 2-3 years old because they would run a bunch of tests.
Apparently, the moment the blood was taken, we had to serve her a glucose drink and allow her to eat before she starts seizing.
That scared me.
I proceeded to continue my review for the acute bay patients as well as clerking any new cases and taking bloods.
Around 8pm, my mentor came in and told me that there were many ongoing cases in the emergency department and she would not be able to follow the on-call rounds.
Thankfully, the specialist on-call is a dear and I was comfortable with presenting to her.
She eventually came, I presented the cases and proceeded to clerk any new admissions as well as taking their blood.
I can’t remember the amount of admissions that night but I do remember it being a rather smooth one.
In between, there were patients who developed fever to which I asked the staff nurse to serve paracetamol after calculating the dosage and according to their weight and indenting it.
Looking back, how easily I would prescribed paracetamol upon a child having fever and assessing if the situation warrants for blood taking. But then, I was nervous and terrified.
The night progressed and around 3am, the staff nurse informed me that the hypoglycaemic child’s blood sugar profile was 3.5. Upon reaching 3, I had to inform the medical officer and standby to aspirate 20ml of blood on this poor girl.
At 3am in the morning? No way.
Well, she was not asked to fast and thus correcting it would not be hard.
I then asked the nurse and her mother to serve her about 10cc of carbonated drinks.
I felt bad as she was asleep but I could not risk her being extremely hypoglycaemic. Thus, amidst the crying and shouting to go back to sleep, we woke her up and eventually, she started eating.
Obviously, her blood sugar profile increased at least to a safe range whereby if anything were to occur, it would be during the morning shift and there were more people around to help out.
I proceeded to go to Paediatric Ward 4A at Level 4 to take the “coming mornings” of the NNJ or neonatal jaundice babies.
After taking the bloods, I proceeded to send them and returned to the ward to trace the coming morning bloods sent.
At around 6-7am, the morning house officers will start to arrive for their morning reviews. That is when things started to tone down and it would be safe to leave the ward.
I proceeded with brushing my teeth, changing my clothes and went to the pantry to have my morning coffee while awaiting the morning team to “summon” me in the group to help out with the morning joblist.
The referrals were many CERTEST in which I have to poke the nostrils of the patients similar to a COVID-19 test and wrap it in a three-layer packaging to be sent to the Molecular Lab.
Basically, the first night went by extremely well in General Paediatrics and I was done an hour prior to 10am and went back on time that day.
The best thing about ending that shift is that I was looking forward to my “applied leave” as I would be flying back to my hometown for 5 days which turned out to be the best weekend I ever had in the longest time.
Related Posts:
- My First On-Night Experience In Nursery Ward
- My Experience In General Paediatrics (Paeds 2B) – Housemanship Diaries
- Enjoying The Journey – Housemanship Diaries
- The Paediatric Wards In Sarawak General Hospital
- Housemanship Diaries: Surviving the Tagging Period in Paediatrics
- Tagging Day 1 In My Third Posting – Day 498 | Housemanship Diaries
- The Benefits Of Working During The Weekend / Weekdays As A House Officer | Housemanship Diaries
- Reflection of The Obstetric and Gynaecology Posting
- My First Ever Explanation Letter
- The Joy Of Working The Night Shift As A House Officer
- I Survived 26 Days Of Tagging In O&G – Housemanship Diaries
The Theoretical Doctor 