Throughout my housemanship so far, my most bizarre night shift has to be on 16 June 2022. It was during my Obstetrics and Gynaecology posting.
On that night, I was supposed to be in charge of the labour room & patient assessment centre (PAC), while one of my colleague was in charge of the ward. However, my colleague took an emergency leave just before the shift started at 7PM. As a result, I alone had to look after both the ward and the labour room & PAC. That was a very tough challenge, considering the large amount of work in both places.
At 8:30PM after clerking a new patient and doing a postnatal review, there was no pending work at the labour room & PAC, so I quickly went up to the ward. There were 13 postnatal discharges and I started writing them. I expected that before long, there would be new patients at the PAC and I would have to go back down to clerk them.
As it turned out, no patients came to the PAC at all from 8PM until the morning shift House Officers arrived at 7AM on the next day. This is a very rare occurrence. Throughout the night, there was only one patient in the labour room, who was sent down from the ward by me.
I managed to complete all the 13 postnatal discharges and take all of the morning bloods by 6AM. I then proceeded with doing the postnatal examinations and baby updates. In the end, I completed all my work and went home at 9:45AM.
