Just completed my 14 hour shift on a weekend. I must warn people who want a family and social life it's going to be extremely hard to balance with shifts like that. It was literally nonstop jobs for 14 hours. Imo better than studying but pretty draining. GLHF
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14 hour shift in medicine FML (4 Viewers)
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RenegadeMx
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this is where u put your time management skills you -should- have learnt over years
Is this your first weekend cover shift?
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RishBonjour99
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Lol shit.
Oh well, still better thank banking hours. But it must be draining for non-stop. Did you get a lunch break for 15-20 mins at least? or was it basically running around and eating?
Oh well, still better thank banking hours. But it must be draining for non-stop. Did you get a lunch break for 15-20 mins at least? or was it basically running around and eating?
bangladesh
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lol i swear half your posts are about discouraging people to study med
Yeh intern. It's not discouraging but a realistic view of what you will be required to do. I was covering 3 wards as a single doctor. Anything trouble I would need to review myself, fever, haematuria, chest pain etc. (Yes you can ask the more advanced doctors but if you keep asking they will get pissed). Was handed an ECG to interpret for a patient with MI. Luckily got saved by the advanced trainee because I had no idea what I was looking for. Had a basic idea but for someone who just had a MI you don't want to make any mistakes so it's pretty daunting.
You can duck off to eat but then you'll have more jobs piled on. I realised it was impossible to finish all jobs before the night staff comes in. Hopefully it gets better with time but first weekend shift as a doctor you will feel like crap.
Worked from 4pm-12pm today. I actually enjoyed it as more senior doctors were there after 10pm to help you out. Since I'm young I don't mind working the evening shift.
Also god cannulas. I've done more cannulas in 1 day than my entire life as a med student. Good thing that I learn fast as I can cannulate pretty well now just after 2 days of intense cannulation. Can always improve but I'm happy with my ability atm.
You can duck off to eat but then you'll have more jobs piled on. I realised it was impossible to finish all jobs before the night staff comes in. Hopefully it gets better with time but first weekend shift as a doctor you will feel like crap.
Worked from 4pm-12pm today. I actually enjoyed it as more senior doctors were there after 10pm to help you out. Since I'm young I don't mind working the evening shift.
Also god cannulas. I've done more cannulas in 1 day than my entire life as a med student. Good thing that I learn fast as I can cannulate pretty well now just after 2 days of intense cannulation. Can always improve but I'm happy with my ability atm.
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It just comes with experience. As long as you realise your limitations and know when to escalate, you'll be fine--but it sounds like you are enjoying it. A medical degree doesn't train you for the medical workforce, hence the "trial by fire", but the conditions in Australia are significantly improved compared to other places, ie UK.
With the eating thing, doctors don't get scheduled lunch breaks like nurses do. Sometimes it'll be cruisy and you'll get a long break. Sometimes you'll feel quite rushed. It's easy to forget to eat but important that you do eat for those 8am-10pm weekend shifts--non-urgent jobs should wait.
With the eating thing, doctors don't get scheduled lunch breaks like nurses do. Sometimes it'll be cruisy and you'll get a long break. Sometimes you'll feel quite rushed. It's easy to forget to eat but important that you do eat for those 8am-10pm weekend shifts--non-urgent jobs should wait.
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This is where hospitals should be privatised. 14 hrs working non stop? More like arsing around for half of that time to milk the overtime and after hours loadings. If you can't understand how to read an ECG you are incompetent.
Kiraken
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Lol this guy
isildurrrr1
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There are private hospitals you mong. They still work 14 hours non-stop it's part of the job and written into the contract/pay. Same shit with ADF personnel, you think they "milk" overtime when they get into a 12 hour firefight?
Lol who does the weekend shifts in private hospitals? Oh I forgot also JMOs. Good luck trying to do 15 cannulas, rewriting 30 med charts/reviewing medications, admitting 3 patients, supervising 3 CT scans, 10 venepunctures, placing 20 fluid orders whilst checking patients electrolytes, chasing results and scans, reviewing 5 patients etc. and the list goes on. I actually worked 15 hours but no one puts in overtime for 1-2 hours and sometimes more than that.
Wait you have no idea about the system and you are making a comment what a joke. LOL you try interpret an ECG to the level of an advanced cardiology trainee OH wait YOU CAN'T. I'm not talking about STEMIs, NSTEMIs, Hypertrophy, Heart blocks I'm talking about acute on chronic changes and what they mean in the context of the patient's situation.
Typical law student, talks shit about another field when they have no idea. Enjoy your 70+ hour work week if you want to make a decent lawyer.
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Congratulations on finishing the first one and welcome to the club. There are many more to come hehe 
The worst ones are after hours during your surgery term, they can be up to 16-17 hours long with only a single break depending on how busy you are.
Things will get easier though as you become faster at cannulas, fluids, clinical reviews etc, knowing what to quickly look for. A few tips I can add:
1. make sure you take breaks to eat/rehydrate, you'll be slow and useless if you don't. I used to work something out with the other intern so that we would carry each others pagers and respond to the urgent calls so that each of us would have two 30 minute breaks during the shift
2. always be thorough reviewing a patient, even if it seems simple. You don't want to see a delirious patient and miss the ischaemic gut because you didn't do an abdo exam. One patient that I'll always remember is a elderly man reviewed by an intern (not me) with a productive cough, relatively low temperature (35.3) and blood pressure trending down, but a stable heart rate. They were overlooked as being septic because of their HR, but it wasn't noticed that they were on metoprolol 50 BD for AF. Especially in your first year, make sure you do a full examination, look at and make sure you understand all the medications, consider the patient's comorbidities etc AND document all of this
3. always ask for advice for anything more complicated than a cough in the first few months. It sounds excessive, but you don't want to be *that guy* who has a patient deteriorate or worse because they missed something (like the intern, again not me, who didn't do a trop on a patient with sudden onset "sharp" pain and missed the beginning of a NSTEMI). One of the things you'll learn the fastest is how little you actually know, and that there's a big jump between theory and practice. It isn't a reflection on you, it is a reflection on the huge amount of material you need to learn as a doctor. Also don't be scared about the reg's getting angry, they aren't annoyed by your ability, rather they are annoyed by the extra work (which is really the patient's fault). This is the one time in your career where you can ask a stupid question and not be judged, exploit it!
The worst ones are after hours during your surgery term, they can be up to 16-17 hours long with only a single break depending on how busy you are.
Things will get easier though as you become faster at cannulas, fluids, clinical reviews etc, knowing what to quickly look for. A few tips I can add:
1. make sure you take breaks to eat/rehydrate, you'll be slow and useless if you don't. I used to work something out with the other intern so that we would carry each others pagers and respond to the urgent calls so that each of us would have two 30 minute breaks during the shift
2. always be thorough reviewing a patient, even if it seems simple. You don't want to see a delirious patient and miss the ischaemic gut because you didn't do an abdo exam. One patient that I'll always remember is a elderly man reviewed by an intern (not me) with a productive cough, relatively low temperature (35.3) and blood pressure trending down, but a stable heart rate. They were overlooked as being septic because of their HR, but it wasn't noticed that they were on metoprolol 50 BD for AF. Especially in your first year, make sure you do a full examination, look at and make sure you understand all the medications, consider the patient's comorbidities etc AND document all of this
3. always ask for advice for anything more complicated than a cough in the first few months. It sounds excessive, but you don't want to be *that guy* who has a patient deteriorate or worse because they missed something (like the intern, again not me, who didn't do a trop on a patient with sudden onset "sharp" pain and missed the beginning of a NSTEMI). One of the things you'll learn the fastest is how little you actually know, and that there's a big jump between theory and practice. It isn't a reflection on you, it is a reflection on the huge amount of material you need to learn as a doctor. Also don't be scared about the reg's getting angry, they aren't annoyed by your ability, rather they are annoyed by the extra work (which is really the patient's fault). This is the one time in your career where you can ask a stupid question and not be judged, exploit it!
Lmao child, how about you pass your first semester of uni (or get through the first week without crying) before you start talking about things you know nothing about.
Re: 14 hour shift in medici
Agree with patpatpat.
Get to know your nurses-in-charge and how to contact them. Get a regular jobs list for each ward set up if you haven't yet.
Troll.
Agree with patpatpat.
If this is happening a lot (the rewriting bit) to other interns, you should talk to your intern supervisor/senior med reg to get the medical teams to try to sort out this stuff before the weekends. Also cannula resites.
Get to know your nurses-in-charge and how to contact them. Get a regular jobs list for each ward set up if you haven't yet.
So you worked from "4pm to 12pm", this gets better - 20hr shift now ?
This is why lawyers love suing people like you for medical negligence. Hope you have insurance as there will be no mercy! lol can't read an ECG, god help the patient while Medman googles wikipedia what an ECG is.
Obvious troll is obvious.
I've seen emergency physicians and cardiologists struggle to read ECGs of patients who have extensive cardiac disease. I've seen patients with what appeared to be obvious STEMIs go to cath and have no occlusive disease. As patients become more complex, textbook ECGs become the exception rather than the rule.
But keep watching Grey's Anatomy and pretending you have a clue about medicine and how the health professions work. Or even better, since it's such an easy job where you can steal overtime from the government, why don't you try to get in.
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