I'm on call. It's 3 am and I haven't seen a bed in 27 hours. My supervising resident thinks I fouled up my previous two patients and it looks a lot like she's going to think the same about the next patient I'm seeing. My new patients are all dying. My old patients were all living until I ran out of time to take care of them and now they're dying too. I'm tired, my motivation is in the gutter, my confidence in my abilities as a clerk has been decimated.
The attending gave me money to order dinner with. I didn't really want any, but I ordered to shut up him up. The delivery man didn't bring a receipt. Turns out the attending wasn't really buying dinner, but using somebody else's money to buy dinner and he needs a receipt. My resident says now I need to pay for dinner.
On days like these my pager feels heavier than it should, the nursing requests grate just a little bit more and the headaches seem just a little bit stronger. Also, it's the weekend.
Somedays I wonder why these nights have to be so painful. I get so easily frustrated with patients, teachers, administration and policies it's easy to forget why I'm here getting berated for not being as anal as my sphincter clenching resident.
Everybody I'm treating is having a worse day than I am. It's hard to remember that sometimes, but it's the only thing worth remembering on call.
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