Kay finally got through the first twelve-days of her new job and came up to see me yesterday to celebrate my mum's 92nd birthday. It was lovely to see her again. When she was up north at university, I probably saw her once every few months. Now she is only about 30 miles away, we shall be able to see one another more often - I shall be able to pop over to see her for a few hours or vice versa. Lovely jubbly, as Del Boy would say.
As reported in my last post, her initiation in her first job was horrendous. The first five days on the ward with 28 patients, some of them very ill with no senior doctors (or junior for that matter). Just her and the nurses. She did 5 days of 13-hour shifts with no (or no more than 5-minute) lunch breaks. Everything changed at the weekend. She was on-call which meant she was floating round the whole hospital, dealing with newly admitted patients, but she did have a Registrar senior doctor to advise her. Then on the second Monday, she was back to the old ward again firefighting single-handedly. One patient had died over the weekend, meaning her first Monday morning job was to perform an examination of the corpse in the Mortuary to issue to the undertaker. The Registrar was back from his holiday but spent little time with her. It was Wednesday before he realised the extent of her work and arranged for two locums to come in swelling the ranks from one doctor (Kay) the previous week to five doctors (Kay, two locums, Registrar and the F2 who had also just started) at the end of the second week. It was bliss. Kay only had 6 patients to deal with for the last 3 days of last week , was able to finish at 5pm and even had a whole lunch break, sitting down! Her consultant returns from his holiday today so maybe she'll even get some recognition for what she did. Miracles can happen. Meanwhile she's made a heck of a lot of friends in just the space of two weeks and her fellow junior
doctors all around the hospital have elected her to be president of the
doctor's mess, organising their socials. She's not quite sure how this has happened, but is looking forward to taking the role on in her spare time!
I waved her off last night in her car filled to the roof with home comforts to make her digs more home-like. She says she's very happy. And that frankly makes me even happier.
4 comments:
She's amazing. All doctors and nurses are amazing. You must be so proud, if a little anxious about her burden...let's hope it gets a little easier when everyone returns
Spare time? Oh I do hope she gets some. But she's surviving the initial on slaught, well down Kay. Fingers crossed it settles down. Oooh and fingers crossed for a healthy nation for a lower workload :)
Ah that's wonderful news - well done her- and you!
Incredible! She deserves a medal.
They do say that August is a horrendous time in hospitals as the new doctors start their jobs when the experienced ones go on holiday - who thought of that timing? Well done, Kay, for surviving.
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