On-Call #1

This past Monday was my first solo on-call. That meant that I had the on-call pager for a 24 hour period (well, it was actually about 20 hours because in the morning, we still had some orientation stuff to do). But by about 6pm, no other chaplains were in the hospital (Rush has over 600 beds). Needless to say, I was a little anxious and totally freaked out. Though I did have my supervisor's phone numbers and she told me it was perfectly fine to call.

Page went off for the first time not five minutes after I got it. Went and spoke to a patient and family about a Durable Power of Attorney. Any DPOA requests are handled by a chaplain.

Shortly thereafter, I was paged to sit in on a meeting with a family about removing life support from their loved one.

Then I was paged for a regular patient visit.

I got several other pages that I do not remember now.

At some point, I got a page for a Code Blue, but by the time I got to the first floor, a nurse told me everything was fine.

I got a page for a heart attack in the ED. But there was no family and patient couldn't communicate, so she told me not to come.

I got a page for a patient death. We are paged for every death. 1) because it makes sense to have a chaplain, religious-y person when a person had died. and 2) there is a form that has to be filled out, and we are the ones who fill it out.

At 2:30 am, I got a page for another patient death.

At 6:00 am, I got a page for a DPOA.

At 8:17 I got a Code Blue page. By this time I was already in the office and Karen offered to take care of it since I had to do the on-call report. Thank you, Karen! :)

During this night, I slept at the hospital. Very briefly, but I slept. There is a chaplain on-call room in the hospital, outfitted with a computer, television, desk, bathroom, and...you guessed it - a hospital bed! I think maybe I slept two hours total. In addition to waking up the the pager, and not being able to sleep because of anticipation of the pager, I was also awoken twice by a floor cleaner and at least once by beeping from the hall that sounded like a carbon monoxide detector dying. I know what that sound is because my detector at home jsut did that.

All in all, I survivede the night. After I gave my report the next morning, I ended with "And that was my first on-call." Everyone there (other chaplains/staff) clapped for me. January 30 will be my next on-call. Which should be really interesting because that is also the first day of classes for Spring Semester at LSTC.