Holiday weeks are weird. They just are.
It is either too many cases or not many cases at all.
There is no middle ground.
And if the holiday is on the weekend, as is the case with 4th of July, it goes double.
Add in the summer travel season, it might even go platinum.
The normal surgeons are out for vacation. Sometimes out of the country. Don’t worry, the ones that are left and taking the calls are bitter about it.
My notes indicate that the weirdest summer we ever had in the OR was in 2010. No lie, we did 5 laparoscopic appendectomies a night. Every night. For a month. From the middle of June to the middle of July.
It has yet to be topped.
Not that that is a challenge to the universe.
However, we have WAY more instruments and I would not have to do the equivalent of running the 1 laparoscopic scope in the Steris scope sterilizer that lived between ORs 2 and 4.
It was better than Cidex.
Or flash sterilizing the laparoscopic instruments because we only had 2 sets.
Good times. I don’t want to go back there but thinking on my feet kept me sharp.
This holiday week has just begun. Since the full moon is over, I have hope that the universe will be kind to us night shift folk.
Fingers crossed.
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 