Call sucks.

[mysophobe]

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I hate call.

I hate 400 lbs women with aganglionic colons.

I hate 5 hour subtotal colectomies.

That is all.

 

[Lonestar]

I hear ya. Sucks doesn't it. I especially hate those traumas coming in the middle of the night. Just keep trucking.

 

[Blade28]

I hate 400 lbs women with aganglionic colons.

I hate 5 hour subtotal colectomies.

But...you're going into general surgery! So you'll see lots of these cases.

I'm post-call today - had 18 ADMISSIONS to our trauma service yesterday. 18. 😱

 

[mysophobe]

Sorry. Let me clarify.

I hate 5 hour subtotal colectomies at midnight.

 

[Nutmeg1621]

Sorry. Let me clarify.

I hate 5 hour subtotal colectomies at midnight.

Jeez how do you drive home after all of this? You are my new role model.

 

[mysophobe]

Heh. I called a friend of mine and talked on the phone the whole 45 minute drive.

 

[Pooh & Annie]

Jebus! Didn't you people get classes in med school about not being pu$$ies? You obviously were too busy boo-hooing into your grande half-decaf light-milk cafe mocha latte because you had to get up at 0800 for lectures that day!

PS Just kidding, I start my PGY1 in 2 weeks and I haven't had a solid BM in a week...

 

[GMO2003]

Jebus! Didn't you people get classes in med school about not being pu$$ies? You obviously were too busy boo-hooing into your grande half-decaf light-milk cafe mocha latte because you had to get up at 0800 for lectures that day!

PS Just kidding, I start my PGY1 in 2 weeks and I haven't had a solid BM in a week...

LOL...can't wait to see your posts in about a month

 

[ekydrd]

OH.... MY....GAWD!!!!! You people are a riot. I would gladdly trade 1 5-hour subtotal colectomy (and yes, scrubbed in on more than one as a student so I know the pain) for Q4 call in peds where on any call night we can admit 5 pooper/pukers, 3 URIs with meningitic signs (usually end up with adenovirus), 2 or 3 rule out sepsis neonates (which requires an LP every time), at least 2 asthmatics requiring Q2 treatments, a party goer who had too much and is just plain beligerant, a heart surg pt transfer, and one of the 3 well known CP/MR kids who come in frequently and stay for weeks at a time with their high maintenance moms.

And, since I'm on a roll and med-peds to boot... I'm at the VA spa this month so I see old farts who won't quit smoking and can't breathe any more, amputee's who have pressure ulcers they let get really bad (and I mean BAD!!!), lung cancer, colon cancer, skin cancer, c. diff colitis, heart cripples, mentally ill, diabetic nephropathy now needing dialysis 'cause they didn't want to control their sugar levels or give up the candy and donuts, etc.

I guess call sucks no matter where you are or what you are doing. Well, have a good call night for those of you on call tonight. I'll be thinking of you (yeah, right 😉 ).

 

[angel80]

Thank God for Internal Medicine. We cap at 5 admissions per call per intern, and can only carry a max of 10 patients total per intern. On a good, busy day, the team is capped for admissions by midnight, and the admissions pager gets handed over to the B-service hospitalist group for the rest of the night.

 

[AF_PedsBoy]

Wow that's sweet! Not only do we not cap, when our ward fills up, we just open up another. In fact the NICU transferred a former 33+4 week GA to our floor as part of the endless NICU dumps and we were treating the 6 day old with NEC on the peds ward for a week lol. It's worse because since we're one of only two admit hospitals, if an outlying ER wants to admit a kid to your hospital we have to take it - we had to admit a 1 year old who was mildly dehydrated but was tolerating PO feeds because the ER didn't have the staff to sit around and feed the kid but "didn't feel comfortable sending him home." You should see the flood on a Friday afternoon around clinic closing time on a three day weekend 😡

 

[turtle md]

I hate call.

Ah, EM...

Shift's over and I'm going home... 😀

 

[mysophobe]

Haha, I love this place. You guys crack me up. I'm allowed to hate call. I've been taking call for like 6 years now (though only the last 2 as a doctor-wannabe). Nah, I'd much rather be "operating" (read: holding retractors while being pimped mercilessly) at 3am than a lot of other things. Plus, I got to help close.

 

[timtye78]

It wasn't after a month in the Trauma ICU here and fielding endless floor calls from the unit, that I realized how sweet anesthesia call is most of the time: roughly 50-70 percent of the time never being called overnight, even while carrying the airway pager plus my regular pager. Excluding Anesthesia OB call which is a different story of course.

 

[stephend7799]

Sorry. Let me clarify.

I hate 5 hour subtotal colectomies at midnight.

why so long? thats a 60-90 minute case...

 

[Dimoak]

why so long? thats a 60-90 minute case...

Perhaps the colon went septic and they had to abort once or twice? Or maybe complications, etc?

 

[mysophobe]

why so long? thats a 60-90 minute case...

Well, for one, the attending is pretty slow. Secondly, I'm probably exaggerating a bit. It was probably more like 2 1/2 - 3 hours. She was really fat and had a ton of adhesions. Plus, he let me do a lot, so that took a while since I had never done a few things before, i.e., use the ka-chunga machine, mature the ostomy, put in retention stitches, etc.

 

[Blade28]

Thank God for Internal Medicine. We cap at 5 admissions per call per intern, and can only carry a max of 10 patients total per intern. On a good, busy day, the team is capped for admissions by midnight, and the admissions pager gets handed over to the B-service hospitalist group for the rest of the night.

God I wish we had these "caps" that you speak of. 🙂

18 admissions, 49 patients on the service right now. 👎

 

[stephend7799]

It wasn't after a month in the Trauma ICU here and fielding endless floor calls from the unit, that I realized how sweet anesthesia call is most of the time: roughly 50-70 percent of the time never being called overnight, even while carrying the airway pager plus my regular pager. Excluding Anesthesia OB call which is a different story of course.

you are not learning if you are not called 50-70 percent of the time..

when i was an anesthesia resident, i took 7-9 overnite calls a month and literally 3-4 of them were all nighters.. (meaning we did cases all night in the OR). think about it.. at a big university place, somebody wants to operate all night. The surgeons love it.. At least the younger ones do.

 

[mysophobe]

I like it at night. It's definitely a different feeling than during the day.

 

[Blade28]

at a big university place, somebody wants to operate all night. The surgeons love it.. At least the younger ones do.

👍 👍

 

[stephend7799]

I like it at night. It's definitely a different feeling than during the day.

I guess there is no place you wo uld rather be then in the OR

 

[mysophobe]

Well, at 3am, I'd rather be sleeping. But, if I have to be working, the OR is where I want to be. I don't really look at this as a job, but rather something I love for which I'm fortunate enough to get paid (in July anyway!).

 

[Nutmeg1621]

So myso, any idea what you want to do your fellowship in yet?

 

[Von Hohenheim]

I like it at night. It's definitely a different feeling than during the day.

Huh? So do you hate call or like it? My take is that being tired sucks, but generally I always got more trust/responsibility in to OR during the night so it pays off. I'll probably change my mind on that later on.

BTW, You say you've been taking call for 6 years with 2 of those as a med student. What were you before, an scrub tech or something? And it sounds from your post that you've been taking call recently. Has your internship started already? I don't even do orientation for a couple of weeks. Tell me you're not still doing medschool rotations. 😱

 

[Monty Python]

But...you're going into general surgery! So you'll see lots of these cases.

I'm post-call today - had 18 ADMISSIONS to our trauma service yesterday. 18. 😱

You're in Atlanta ...... Grady ??

Shades of Charity Hospital New Orleans.

 

[mysophobe]

Huh? So do you hate call or like it? My take is that being tired sucks, but generally I always got more trust/responsibility in to OR during the night so it pays off. I'll probably change my mind on that later on.

BTW, You say you've been taking call for 6 years with 2 of those as a med student. What were you before, an scrub tech or something? And it sounds from your post that you've been taking call recently. Has your internship started already? I don't even do orientation for a couple of weeks. Tell me you're not still doing medschool rotations. 😱

Nah, this thread was just a joke to get some funny comments. I start internship in a few weeks. And yes, I was a scrub tech for a few years before med school and then during. As far as liking call, I like the atmosphere and the fact that I generally get to do more (as you said, more responsibility), but I usually hate it the next day when I'm driving home.

 

[Blade28]

You're in Atlanta ...... Grady ??

Yup, currently at Grady. Will be there all of July too.

Trauma baby!