Yesterday I had On-Call #4. It was a completely different experience than On-Call #3 from a little over a week ago. I think I was being punished for having the quiet one. ;-)
Four people died on my shift yesterday. Oh, wait. That would actually be five, but for the last one, the unit didn't call me until about four hours after the family left, and then only because they noticed they did not have the all-important release of remains form filled out. A form I would have gotten completed had they called me at 2 am instead of 7 am. Anyway.
At least the deaths happened consecutively instead of concurrently. One took about three hours. One took about two and one took about an hour. One didn't take much time at all because the family did not come to the hospital. All I had to do with it was call them and have them fill out the above-mentioned form over the phone.
I also kept getting weird pages yesterday. The page would read "Call holding - dial this number" and when I did, I got a recording of "Please hold while we assist other customers" the first time and the second time, the person who answered said "I'm sorry - the person you are holding for is not available." Odd.
It finally got quiet around 11:30 and I was hoping for an uneventful night.
I get a page at 12:50, about 20 minutes after I'd fallen asleep. She apologized for paging the wrong number.
1:35, after I'd been asleep again for about 10 minutes. A page with not enough numbers to be a phone extension, so I tried a bunch of different combinations, to no avail.
2:07, after I'd been asleep for about 10 minutes. Same as above, different number, was finally able to get a hold of someone. After talking to her, being transferred, being hung up on, and trying back, nurse finally left a message that a patient would like to see me. And yes, that would be now.
So I went and had an intense conversation with a patient for about an hour. At 2:30 in the morning. But he seemed genuinely thankful and helped by the visit.
Page was quiet until 6:51, when they were freaking out about the death that didn't have the form filled out. I told him a chaplain would take care of it and would bring the form over.
7:18 got a phone call from a patient who wanted a visit. Yes, now. Another challenging patient. I got to on-call report about three minutes late. At report, we went over the three reports from the weekend and I led morning prayer.
There were several other pages, referrals and a few other visits, but that's the gist of it.
I walked more than 6 miles.
We then did a verbatim and I left the hospital about 10:45. Came home, ate some lunch. Slept for about 3 1/2 hours.
Friday I'm on call again.
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