Call

My pediatrics rotation requires that we spend every 5th night on call, and at least two of them be overnight. Being a glutton for punishment, I decided to take my two overnight calls this week to get them out of the way. Monday went as follows:

630-730: pre-round on my patients

730: huddle with senior resident and discuss any issues on the patients

800-830: Morning Report which is a 30 minute didactic conference for medical students and interns

0830-1130: rounding with the cardiology, pulmonology, and clinical medicine (general peds) teams.

1130-12: quickly do anything that needs to happen before 12, i.e. check on labs, order studies, etc..

12-1: noon conference which is a 1 hour didactic session for MSIII's

1:15-2:15 another didactic session

215-6: follow up on my patients and wait around for admissions

6-630 dinner in the cafeteria, which was some not so pleasant pizza

630-9: study and wait for admissions

9-11: admit 1 patient for potential bacterial/viral meningitis, rule out Bell's palsy

11-230: sleep fitfully in the resident lounge, missing a page at 130. Called intern to see if she was still admitting the patient, but she was done.

230: moved to a place in the hospital where I would get better cell phone reception.

230-5: sleep in 20-30 minute increments on a chair in the lobby, checking my phone for pages.

5: Get fed up with not sleeping and start rounding on my patients

5-12: repeat from monday morning.

12 (tuesday): Go home, 2 hour nap, groggy afternoon with studying

9pm: bedtime

Last night was very similar, only instead of sleeping fitfully in a chair, I made sure the intern had the phone number to the wall phone in the lounge, which was very loud, so I wouldn't snooze through a page. We had one admission at 7pm, but after that it was very quiet. I fell asleep at 11 and slept pretty well on the couch until 530, when I began rounding. I forgot, however, that medical students don't have to round with the team in the mornings on the weekend, so rather than going home at 12, I was able to come home at 8 and go to church.

Overall, my two overnight calls were pretty easy, all things considered. Since I don't have the authority to write orders, or answer questions regarding orders, I don't get paged frequently for those reasons, unlike the interns. The interns on our team work about 80 hours a week, which is the ACGME maximum. Last week I think I worked something like 75 hours, which includes my two overnight calls.