Wednesday, 7 January 2009

Stressful sleeping

Am having extreme difficulty sleeping for the past few days. The reason for this is because I am currently working the night shift on the unit. The stress of working the night shift is giving me sleepless days, as I keep on worrying about my shift.

Why am I so stressed? Let me explain.

During the night shift, I am the sole doctor in the unit. I look after 14 patients in the unit. Patients with multi-organ failure and are the sickest of the sickest. Me! A doctor who is only 18 months out of medical school. Of course, I have been told that the on-call consultant (who is at home) is just a phone call away and I can call them for any queries/problems/issues that I have. Furthermore, the on-call consultant lives very close to the hospital and if needed, they can arrive within 5 minutes at the hospital.

Besides that, I attend cardiac arrests and take referrals for admission from other specialties. Luckily for me, I don't make the decision whether to admit or not. I review the patient, gather the information and present the information in a coherent and succinct manner to my consultant (over the phone). And what worries me is that there is a potential that I might not present the information correctly, thus resulting in a wrong decision made, which could either be

1) Admitting a patient who actually doesn't need intensive monitoring
or
2) Turning away a patient who actually does need intensive monitoring

(I prefer scenario 1 rather than 2, obviously)

In some patients, it's very easy to tell that they need admission to the unit. It is the grey cases where they seem to be manageable on the ward but have the potential to deteriorate which makes it difficult to decide whether to admit them or not. Of course, if we had unlimited resources, we could admit everyone but this is not the case. A bed in the unit is a precious commodity which should only be used if necessary.

Now, you understand why I am so stressed out?

No comments: