Goodbye, Wards. Hello, Night Float.

My last month of wards was probably the most laid-back service ever. My census never went above 8; for a while we only had 2 patients at a time. This was great for my resident and me, but bad for the two med students and PA student who were working with us. We were also hit by 2 snowstorms in the span of one week, which was ridiculous and unusual for this state. Fortunately the "snow days" were treated like weekends and only one member of each team had to work. And since I was post-call just before the snowstorm hit, I got 2 days off from work because of the way the schedule worked out. Great for me, and also good that my resident lived across the street from the hospital and didn't have to fight snow to get to work like others did. Some people ended up just spending the night at the hospital rather than try to drive home. Even though the snow was a huge pain, I have to admit that the following day, when the sun is out and all the neighbors are out shoveling their cars free from the snow, there's a strange sort of peace in the air.

My last day of medicine wards, I was on call until 8 pm and had to attend to a rapid response at 7 pm. A patient I was covering suddenly became dyspneic and had audible stridor. The nurses kept asking me what to do, and I just about froze. It's somewhat pathetic that I'm almost 3/4 through my intern year (and did a month of MICU, too) and didn't know what to do in that situation. So I did what was most logical: call the MICU resident and one of the triage residents to come assess the patient and see if she needed to be transferred to the unit. Fortunately she eventually stabilized, but definitely gave us all a scare. When I voiced my concerns that I would not be ready for night float (which I start this evening), the residents said, "That's how you learn." They also assured me I did the right thing by calling them for help when I was in over my head, but I can't help but worried that this will happen again on night float. I'll be covering the general medicine, heme-onc and renal patients, and everyone knows the heme-onc and renal patients are SICK. *sigh* I'm doomed.