Night Float Sucks!

[Square Pants]

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To all my fellow night floaters out there, I feel your pain:
The pain of starting work at 5pm, then going home at 7am. During those 14 hours, bad **** goes down, and all you have is a crappy sign out like "Oh, he's in with CHF. He'll be fine"

The pain of going home, sleeping, pooping if you are lucky, and then starting those damn 14 hours again. And you just know **** will go down again.

The pain of having 80+ patients and not knowing a damn thing about them.

The pain of being called for Tylenol, or a K+ level of 3.3 (um, do I care?)


Almost done... Just 8 more days to go.

 

[edinOH]

Just finished a week of it myself.

Hell of alot better than q4 call though.

 

[Finally M3]

Mmmm...can't wait to start nightfloat in 10 days!

My moto will be; "You'll have to talk to the primary team tomorrow."

On the plus side, it's only 10 days of it since Febuary is a shortened month!

 

[Seaglass]

Yeah, I actually liked medicine night float.

 

[tofurious]

Night float is great as long as there are no family members who arrive at 11PM wanting to talk to "the doctor" about 5-year plans for their relatives.

(And I can't stand the "but I have to work in the morning" response - yes, you must be the only one who has to do that!)

 

[Square Pants]

Night Float blows.
3:00 AM is when that 2nd Troponin comes in at, oh say 13.7

3:05 AM is when a COPD'er decides to go into acute respiratory distress.

3:10 AM is when you have to deal with acute CHF because the AM team forgot to keep track of I's/O's

3:15 AM is when you have to page a very angry surgery resident for a stat consult for localizing abdominal pain and guarding. (Oh, but first page a very angry Rads resident for a stat Abd/Pelvis CT)

3:20 AM is when the drunk on CIWA decides to get agitated, whacks out, and you have to call security for 4 point restraints.

then lather, rinse, repeat.

 

[Skrubz]

night float does blow, but sucks more when you do it your first month of internship. that said, cross-cover night float is really good for building up your confidence. or just scaring the **** out of you.

the second time around cross-cover is a lot easier. but this time i have to admit too, which just really sucks. i'd rather cross-cover than admit. 2 more nights...

of course, my hours weren't/aren't quite as bad as yours. 8p-8a for cross-cover, 11p-730a for admitting.

but you're right, having to slap bipap on 3 patients in a row to try to avoid intubating them, then deal with a family that doesn't want to take the patient home or is demanding to know what's going on is ridiculous. or arguing with a patient for an hour about what antibiotic she's supposed to be on. what really gets me are the 3 am calls - "doctor, doctor, this patient hasn't peed in 3 hours!"
"is she sleeping?"
"yes."
"that's fine. i'm not sleeping and i haven't peed in 5 hours."

 

[VentdependenT]

I really enjoyed having to pronounce a patient at 7:00am and then calling the family as my shift ended. Never seen the man or spoke with the family prior.

Awsome!

I'm glad that is over.

I lost about 7 lbs that month. I had to crank my belts tighter so my friggen pants didn't fall off. That whole eating thing takes time.

 

[Whisker Barrel Cortex]

No matter how bad night float may be, its gotta be better than being on call q4d, cross-covering all of the other teams patients, while trying to admit patients the whole time. I don't think I got through a single H&P intern year without being paged at least 4-5 times during the encounter, usually even more often than that. While I'm glad those days are over, radiology call is much worse. At least its less often.

 

[Winged Scapula]

Night float is great as long as there are no family members who arrive at 11PM wanting to talk to "the doctor" about 5-year plans for their relatives.

(And I can't stand the "but I have to work in the morning" response - yes, you must be the only one who has to do that!)

Not only the privilege of the night float but any resident who cross covers another service at night. I still shake my head that the nurses even bother to call when they know the coverage resident hasn't a clue about the patient and long range plans.

Love those calls. 🙄

 

[double elle]

HA! I am glad I came across this thread. Currently, those of us who are "guessing" that we'll be interns next year at the place we are rotating are discussing night float call vs rotating call. Most are for it...but we've only seen what the current residents go thru with the rotation system (only 5 of them).....There will be 10 interns next year. It hasn't been decided if we will be covering weekend days or not...so, if the BEST scenerio happens, we will NOT have weekend day coverage and just be on every 10th night....that isn't too bad. HOWEVER, there are 3 of us who have to start taking surgery call along with the house officer call (double call = cross call??). So, to have already had the month of float...so we only have to take call for one service... would be very nice.

I would really appreciate any more input anyone has on this...We are planning to try to write up something to take to the DME when the match is done.