Up all night, sleep all day

(If you missed the reference, click here.)

So I'm at work. And there's about a half dozen other things I could be doing in this moment of down time to make the ensuing hours easier, but, I'm blogging instead.

I'm on night float again. Which means I work from 9:30pm to 8:30 am from Sunday night until Friday morning. I relieve the intern, so, I basically get to be the intern on call. Which is better than actually being the intern on call at this hour, because I haven't spent all day getting worked up and hammered by the ER and the crisis pager.

I'm a fan of night float, because I think it's easier on the system as a whole, but I'm not particularly a fan of doing night float, because it's not especially easy on MY system. I am not one of those chosen few who can reverse their circadian rhythms at will. I? Have enough trouble maintaining a circadian cycle under the best of circumstances. But, we all have to do our part.

I've been here an hour and a half, and thusfar mostly what I've done is answer the phone. I tried to convince a man who claimed to be "confused" that he should stop drinking and get a clinic appointment in the morning, and argued with an outside ER doc (who sounded for the life of me like he was tweaking...or at least manic...) that I cannot accept a patient for transfer with a critical lab value, no matter how pleasant she is.

Even if you don't let me respond, the answer is still going to be no.

And now there's a patient to see in the ER. Guess I'll go do my job....