On Call

Soooo I was pretty tired today. Had to rely on mountain dew to keep me focused through developmental clinic this morning. At 4 I started on call for psychiatry so I made a quick trip to Jack in the Box for some extremely unhealthy (but cheap!) tacos before 4pm. Unfortunately, there was already a patient in the ER, but the medical student gets the first patient so, I got time to sit down and eat. After I ate, I just decided to take a nap, cuz you never know when you'll get paged. It felt gooooood to just close my eyes. One of the psych interns woke me up an hour later as she walked into the intern room. I was completely out of it.. couldn't even answer her basic what're you doing this month type questions without 15 secs of processing. Went back to bed until I was paged at about 9pm for another patient in the ED. Took an hour to talk to him, another 30 min or so to disposition him, and didn't even finish the note until a little after 12 am. Didn't feel like it took that much time, but 3-4 hours for one patient seems excessive. But I guess this is the time I learn how to manage my time and get faster. My goal for the next few patients is 1 hr to see/assess/discuss and 1 hour for putting in the orders and writing the note. Two hours seems reasonable. Better than three.

Of course, now it's about 1 am and I am wide awake. I will try lying down. Or maybe I will get a snack.

Ooh, I just remembered I have a doctor's appointment at 9 tomorrow. I guess I will set my PDA alarm clock. Hopefully there will be no more people in the ED. But I would rather have them come in tonight than on Friday night when I am on call again.