Thankfully, it was an otherwise quiet night.
At a little after midnight, Approximately 12 ambulances lined up outside a&e and control rang in to warn the heli was on it's way in also.
Our on-call anaesthetist had already been kidnapped by a&e to sit on a 14y/o vs. car (we don't take paeds, they go to the nearest 'big' hospital, and they were waiting on transfer) and he'd called up to the unit to beg for 'someone who knows what they're doing omgplease' and i'd been duly dispatched to stop him from throwing a hissy fit and upsetting the staff down there. (The last time he was down there, he got so mad with the staff he actually did start throwing things: I missed the fun parts, but remember the several hours of soap-box ranting we had to endure after he came back up to the unit. In his defence, they really are scarily incompetant sometimes).
So anyway, by virtue of timing I got a front seat for an all together different kind of hissy fit when after a good 5 minutes of solid flapping, panicked phone calls and an almost-argument in the middle of the department, the moment of realisation dawned on the faces of two registrars, 3 nurse prac's and the a&e senior nurse that yes, really - April fools!
Our on-call anaesthetist had already been kidnapped by a&e to sit on a 14y/o vs. car (we don't take paeds, they go to the nearest 'big' hospital, and they were waiting on transfer) and he'd called up to the unit to beg for 'someone who knows what they're doing omgplease' and i'd been duly dispatched to stop him from throwing a hissy fit and upsetting the staff down there. (The last time he was down there, he got so mad with the staff he actually did start throwing things: I missed the fun parts, but remember the several hours of soap-box ranting we had to endure after he came back up to the unit. In his defence, they really are scarily incompetant sometimes).
So anyway, by virtue of timing I got a front seat for an all together different kind of hissy fit when after a good 5 minutes of solid flapping, panicked phone calls and an almost-argument in the middle of the department, the moment of realisation dawned on the faces of two registrars, 3 nurse prac's and the a&e senior nurse that yes, really - April fools!