Friday, October 26, 2012

PTR's guide to five weeks of night shifts


Week 1: you hate the nurses.  All nurses are blundering dolts who exist purely to waste your time and mislead you.

Week 2: you hate the home medical teams.  All doctors are inscrutable scribbling fence-sitters, refusing to actively manage their patients until forced to by multiple emergency calls to intensive care overnight.

Week 3: you hate the patients.  All patients are demented, stinking, crumbly bags of blood and faeces just waiting to crash out of bed the moment you settle down for a rest.

Week 4: you hate your family, innocent passers-by, Mother Theresa.  Humanity is doomed, and deaf to your plaintive cries to save itself.

Week 5: you hate yourself and yourself only.  Just do what it takes to get through the next hour, day, week.  The end is in sight, or it would be if it wasn't for this darkness.

2 comments:

Lumpage said...

I always thought nights would be amazing. During my younger years I was practically nocturnal and it seemed like a good lifestyle choice. How horrifying the future may be.

On the plus side I found your handiwork in some patient notes - a little dissapointed you didn't sign off with 'PTR', or at least promote your blog a little.

PTR said...

Nights would be ok if you didn't have a family living days and if it wasn't so spirit crushing in general. At first there is a certain novelty to it and it's exciting but that wears off pretty quickly.

That's funny that you found my notes. Hopefully nothing too boneheadedly moronic.