Tales from the wards - my first ever night shift

Dr William Dawson recalls his first ever night shift

Staying in hospital accommodation is a great way to meet peers and colleagues and form lasting friendships. For me, without these friends I wouldn't have made it through my first day working as a doctor.

A cruel twist of fate

A cruel twist of fate meant my first week of work in a busy teaching hospital started with seven days of 12-hour night shifts. Following a brief afternoon induction, where the rota co-ordinator happily informed us that they had managed to work us for the most number of hours for as little pay as possible, I rushed off to bed to try and sync my sleep pattern for the following night’s shift.

Before my shift, I managed to meet and greet my mess colleagues, who wished me well on my first night shift – it was reassuring that they were as nervous as I was.

It felt like a movie

Clueless of what lay ahead of me I arrived at the manic medical assessment unit. It felt like a scene from a movie; everyone buzzing around me with purpose and urgency. I was surrounded by real doctors, who were experienced and gritty professionals – I felt like a fraud.

Handover happened in a blur, it was sleek, well ordered and punctuated with acronyms I could not decipher. I looked through the list of patients, noting down what I thought might be important in silence, while the grown-ups talked. I watched them flawlessly handing over in order of importance, some leaving to answer bleeps, while others talked privately to each other; I stood there in awe.

I spotted the daytime house officer who looked ready for bed so I asked her if there was anything to do. I was then handed scraps of paper with jobs and patients to see, each one weighed more heavily than the first.

My first patients

The day team departed and the night team arrived; a registrar, two SHOs and two house officers. The registrar gathered us together for an inspiring and supportive speech before he vanished into the bowels of the hospital to attend to the poorliest patients, to save actual lives.

The SHOs started assessing and clerking new admissions. They told us to bleep them if we had any problems. My equally-green counterpart and I looked at our lists; we had half the hospital to cover each, but naively agreed to meet for a cup of tea half way through the night.

And away we went, my first job was to recite a cannula, and conduct a manual evacuation, wait, what?

A blur

Hours blurred into one as I traipsed those corridors, it was a never-ending mission, orienteering from one ward to another completing tasks sent to me via the electronic demon I had begun to fear and loathe in equal measure. As soon as I started a job, the bleep went off!

I replied to each bleep with terror and urgency. Nurses and staff bark orders, we were the new doctors, the ones they liked and trusted had moved on, and in medicine, trust takes time to earn.

The night flashed past and my to-do list gradually disappeared. I felt I was getting the hang of it, until a cannula wouldn’t go in. I returned to the medical assessment ward, but no one was around so I went back to try again. The elderly woman sat in bed smiling while trying not to wince every time I stuck her with a needle in the half light. Her blood pressure was low and she needed fluids, so we need to insert this cannula. I began to sweat, but then my salvation arrived. It was the fresh-faced house officer from the other half of the hospital. She looks different now, like a soldier returning from war, she took over and after a few attempts is successful.

Mission complete

Together we returned to the medical assessment ward to handover to the morning staff. The consultant was stern and clearly keen for the baptism of fire to continue so he quizzed each of the night staff. Over time one by one we were dismissed, I end up leaving at 11am.

I wandered shattered in a daze back to the accommodation block and the doctor’s mess. To my saviour I found my fellow house officer waiting up for me, despite being dispatched to bed half an hour ago. How about that cup of tea? She said. Like I said before, this is where you make friendships that last a lifetime.

Find out more

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