working nights

Hey everyone,

 

I think my blog is about 3 years old now!  Woohoo!

 

I'm working nights at WakeMed Hospital in Raleigh, and the websites here are filtered, so it won't let me on my blog.  Haha, I have figured out, though, that I can e-mail the blog, then my post will be entered. 

 

The "night float" residents are the residents responsible for taking care of patients, and doing new patient admissions, at night.  We take care of all the internal medicine patients at UNC, so it requires 5 night float residents.  At WakeMed in Raleigh, we take care of only a minority of patients, so only 1 night float is needed.  I've been that 1 guy this past week. 

 

It's neat in one respect - you are the man (or woman), and the ultimate decisions rest on you, and there's really no one else immediately around to help.  Every night I've had at least one patient require transfer to the ICU, whether its from uncontrollable SVT (abnormally fast heart rate), delirium tremens (alcohol withdrawal delerium with unstable vital signs), recurrent pnuemothorax (abnormal air in the chest), hypoxic respiratory failure in a sickle cell patient, or a stroke.  It's been busy!

 

Speaking of...I just got paged to do 2 more admissions.  At Wake, we do 4 admissions a night, which isn't bad if other people aren't crashing on the floors.  So..I'll write more later, or during the holidays.  Can't wait to go to Tampa and see our family and friends!!

 

Alan