The gown card reads “I’d say we’re too smart to be on this shift, but that may be why we are on this shift.”
Different shifts require different levels of knowledge.
They also require different levels of imagination and weebles.
By that I mean that when you knock down a weeble, they don’t stay down.
A toy from the 1970?
When weebles wobble, they don’t fall down?
Different people gravitate to different shifts.
This may be because of the management mix on those shifts. This may be because of personality types on the other off-shifts.
This may because we are there to get the case/job/work done.
End of list.
Some shifts are there to put in their time before they get relieved.
Ahem, day shift.
Some shifts are there to do the work because they know they won’t get relieved.
To go back to what the gown card, shift types kind of tend to stick together.
The off-shift knows that there is no other option but them and work with it.
After all, there isn’t anyone to complain to.
Get in, do the case, get done.
It really can be as simple as that.
To put it simply, there is a patient who needs us. We have the skills. We have the knowledge. There is no one coming to save us.
We might as well save ourselves.
Does this make us smart?
No necessarily.
It does make us a cohesive group, with little in-fighting.
Because none of us are getting out of this shift, until the work is done.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 