I'm sure this is a stupid question BUT, I know people sign out to the float at the end of the day (between 5 and 7 pm) but what does the float do when her/his time is up the following day? Do all the other interns come see the float in the morning to check in with the float or does the float just alert any intern who had a patient that had some issue overnight? Also what time of day does the float stop being the float - 7am?, 6 am? and instead the nurses start paging the intern the patient belongs to.
Float Question
- Thread starter C Chance
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Depends on the particular program and service. At my IM residency program, NF comes in @ 6 or 7 and stays until 7am. On the MICU and CCU, they give cross cover signout to all teams first thing, then round on overnight admits with the attending and day teams. On the wards, teams generally hunt them down for signout and the NF team then rounds on any new admits with the accepting team.
In med school, cross-cover signout was the first 15-20 minutes of morning report (7am) to all teams, then rounded on new admits with the accepting team.
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The particular hours for night float will vary from program to program, but usually we are talking 12-13 hour overnight shifts. You often have a sign out in the morning very similar to the one you had the prior evening, except that you may be signing out in the morning to more people, but the concept is the same. They sign the patient out to you in the evening, you sign the patient back to them in the morning. That way everyone knows what happened while they weren't there. Every program has a slightly different way of doing this, with some form of oral and written hand-off.
