walking into another cold dawn
i'm currently off the night rotation so my body clock is stuck in the grey fug of limbo; it wants sleep it's just not sure when to get it.
I was going to write last night but we didn't finish til 5am, we were all ready to curl up around 2.30am-ish with the anesthetists reasoning with the surgeons that 'life and limb' means exactly that and unless their case is life and limb they can wait til 7am.
This might sound cruel to some of you but our currently protocol is only to have 3 scrub staff on the nightshift (christ knows why) meaning we can only operate a single theatre suite at a time. So if we DID do this case and then a life & limb came crashing through the doors we really would be stuffed as we'd have no theatre personnel nor theatre space. You see? By not doing the case we are in the position to save more lives than if we did it.
Of course I reckon all we need to do is employ another scrub staff and another anesthetic assistant and we could roll all night.
But who listens to me?
And besides as the surgeons and gas-men were hashing this out a case DID come crashing through the doors from A&E (the ER in the UK).
It was ok, just a bit hairy, nothing bowel loosening.
Bowel loosening stuff usually involves AAA's or car crashes that need tons of ortho input, and NO ONE wants to wake an orthopaedic surgeon up at 4am.
We finally got a chance for a sit-down at 5am. And spent the last two hours of my shift drinking tea and wandering around in a daze putting sets away and going "feh...".
I now have 2 days to re-adjust before my return to the land of light on sunday morning. Then I have to work all day and take the hand over from my friend Fluffy (nickname) who had her first night last night, a run of 8. EIGHT!
Here's hoping the next 7 go ok for her.
This is why all nurses are bonkers, our body clocks are soooo fucked round we don't know what planet we're on half the time.
And I've got lazering in a few hours.
I was going to write last night but we didn't finish til 5am, we were all ready to curl up around 2.30am-ish with the anesthetists reasoning with the surgeons that 'life and limb' means exactly that and unless their case is life and limb they can wait til 7am.
This might sound cruel to some of you but our currently protocol is only to have 3 scrub staff on the nightshift (christ knows why) meaning we can only operate a single theatre suite at a time. So if we DID do this case and then a life & limb came crashing through the doors we really would be stuffed as we'd have no theatre personnel nor theatre space. You see? By not doing the case we are in the position to save more lives than if we did it.
Of course I reckon all we need to do is employ another scrub staff and another anesthetic assistant and we could roll all night.
But who listens to me?
And besides as the surgeons and gas-men were hashing this out a case DID come crashing through the doors from A&E (the ER in the UK).
It was ok, just a bit hairy, nothing bowel loosening.
Bowel loosening stuff usually involves AAA's or car crashes that need tons of ortho input, and NO ONE wants to wake an orthopaedic surgeon up at 4am.
We finally got a chance for a sit-down at 5am. And spent the last two hours of my shift drinking tea and wandering around in a daze putting sets away and going "feh...".
I now have 2 days to re-adjust before my return to the land of light on sunday morning. Then I have to work all day and take the hand over from my friend Fluffy (nickname) who had her first night last night, a run of 8. EIGHT!
Here's hoping the next 7 go ok for her.
This is why all nurses are bonkers, our body clocks are soooo fucked round we don't know what planet we're on half the time.
And I've got lazering in a few hours.