Nights are forever...

If the staff had their way.. nights *would* be forever for me. Which is a slightly backwards way of saying that night shift is going well for me. I was a little concerned that I wouldn't be able to sleep during the day (quit laughing, Mom) and would have headaches and be non-functional while awake. So far so good... only one bad day/night. The morning shift has commented on how lively I look at 7 am when they drag in. I'm actually enjoying nights. I am much more productive in the office (no where else in the hospital to wander, everyone is closed). I have slogged thru about a months worth of work already... only have 5 more months to go!! hahaha And... the staff is getting something out of this that I should have provided years ago.... teaching time. And what, you may ask, am I teaching? Rib retractors... Rib retractors? Umm, yes, among other things.... Instruments... and all manner of other medieval torture devices (user end, not receiving end). ;-)

Why would I do this? Well, it all started a couple weeks before Thanksgiving when several things came to the attention of me and my boss. There was a very severely injured patient in the ER one night who required the use of some of these instruments. It was only after the fact that we learned that some of the staff wasn't as familiar as they could be with the tools, so I started thinking that some education would be beneficial. There were a couple of other things that needed attending and since late November/December are my slowest months as far as meetings and classes go, I volunteered (yup, no one held a gun to my head, no one twisted my arm) to go to nights for a few weeks to strengthen the staff and impart all my worldly wisdom (gag) to the after-hours crew.

So far, so good. I've had 2 very good scavenger hunts so far (Hi.. your patient has this problem, you need to do this procedure, pull the equipment). And there have been several really good questions raised about general department procedure and stocking and stuff... And... (side benefit!!!) it's been a darn good review for me. There's nothing like trying to teach someone else something you are rusty with to motivate the learning gene! And... ever since I started my equipment review, the docs have been asking for a small tray of instruments to create a temporary breathing hole in your neck and I have been diligently trying to figure out what to put in the tray and where to *procure* the instruments. Well, shocker of all shockers... when we were digging thru some of the little used/covered-with-dust-bunnies stuff, I FOUND two! pre-packaged trays of just such pokey-holey equipment... one of which is expired which means I can open it and PLAY!!! And contact the rep on Monday to get more!! WHOOPPEE!!! I had *no* idea that we even had this stuff. Makes me wonder what else is in there!!! Will pass on to the boss that the equipment lists need to be re-typed and posted in the room where all this stuff is. How can we use it if we don't know it's there???

It was a good day.