Close enough for government work....

Officially started my stint on "night float" at the county hospital today. I have yet to complete an actual rotation here, but (thankfully in terms of preparing for the experience) I have subbed-in for about a week a couple months back. I have a feel for how things work here at County, although I am not yet adept at getting things to happen.

I'll have plenty of time to learn - this is the first of at least three months I'll be putting in here. This first one is a little different too - "night float" is basically the on-call service from 6pm to 6am. Thankfully I won't have any consulting duties (seeing inpatients from other parts of the hospital that may need surgical intervention of sorts) - it is purely caring for current surgical patients on the floors. And no "rounding," getting vital signs and doing daily notes on the patients. But in trade-off, I'm responsible for several surgical services' patients all at once, not knowing much about their background or current problem other than the two or three lines signed-out to me as I start my shift. And the other trade-off is the derangement to my schedule - I'll have to figure out when to sleep and when to get business done and when to spend quality time with my wife.

Working at County is in itself quite the experience - being government-run and offering care to any that come knocking. It will offer quite a lot of learning, as many patients can be quite ill or quite unique in their presentations. But the inefficiencies and other frustrations will be quite the downside, as I have already experienced in my brief time on a prior rotation. Hopefully I can channel that into working out each day when I get home - killing two birds with one stone and improving my health as a side effect. At worst maybe it will counter-act the rise in blood pressure I can almost already feel...