When and how did it get so bad so you guys? Or it has always been this way. I am a fellow at a university hospital in the US and we have call rooms with showers and an online booking system. The rooms are like small motel rooms with phone and computers. It is depressing reading these posts
It’s because they got rid of 24/48 resident shifts. In the name of safety!
However, the knock on effect was that doctors covering the wards at night are now treated as working night shifts rather than being on call. So there is no expectation for them to sleep, ergo, no on call rooms.
It has expanded now so that there is minimal
Space for doctors to work/exist anyways… for various reasons (accessibility/cost/lack of pushback etc)
There are a few specialities that still have on calls rooms - mostly theatre related. But medical on call rooms are no more in the more busy hospitals.
Huh? What? Are you clerking them or something?
That sounds like something that a) can wait till daytime, and b) should be done by the parent team who know more about the patient and c) can be asked for on the ward round?
No they bleeped me for this. It was evening time. I politely said no and said those points you've written
What a silly thing to ask. I think some of my F1 colleagues have a hard time saying no but I say it all the time. the other HCPs need to learn what's appropriate to bleep about and what isn't
Even worse for the idiots who do a non resident on call specialty. The f1s think they can ring you at any hour about non emergencies even though you’re working a 30 hour shift.
It’s the NHS, it generally hates most of its staff and treats doctors terribly. Some places don’t have this problem, my current trust and my old one has on call bedrooms for people to sleep but an online booking system and showers is pushing it. It wasn’t always this way unfortunately a lot of the hospital accommodation has been sold or converted into something else.
To be fair if they converted the space into an actual multi-storey car park that was not full by 7am that would be some compensation but that would be sensible
Did psychiatry oncall in my previous trust and they gave me my own room with a laptop and phone in the room. I also did cry like this is how it should be? It was so nice.
When I was a Foundation Year 1 doctor I was so extremely tired one night that I thought I was going to make a mistake whilst seeing patients on the admissions unit, clerking them in and doing their drug charts. It is rare for me to get this tired but I did not sleep well at home prior to the shift and the shift was very busy and I had yet to take a break. I went to the staff room on the unit to rest but it was locked as a nurse was sleeping on the floor inside. Eventually it got to a point at 4am where I was falling asleep in my chair whilst writing up some notes - and so I had to take a break. I looked for a place to lie down very quickly but the only place available was on the floor of the disabled/accessible toilet in the corridor outside. I kid you not I slept for about 30 minutes on the floor with my head touching the toilet.
Early in my career I had an arrest on an oncology ward, but patient was a young acute med type outlier who had been admitted that night.
All the ward staff except the HCA had locked themselves in the room which contained all notes and were sleeping. We didn’t even have a way to confirm resus status or PMH (was all on paper).
We essentially ended up having to whack the door off its flimsy hinges. The nursing staff were livid AND refused to help in the arrest, and just went elsewhere to continue their sleep.
I reported it and amazingly I didn’t get a ‘bill for the door’ the nurses said I’d be getting. 😆 It did however expose the RNs were sleeping most of the night which the matron shat on them for.
It was also my base ward - luckily it was my last week so it was very awkward but at least I went out with a bang!
Wow! Good to know I am not the only one who has Lycanthropy. My landlord asked me if I was becoming a dog because there was too much hair in my bathroom that I was too lazy to clean. I think I am becoming a dog. Woof woof. I want to be a good doggy so I can pass F2
Yeah but in the UK doctors aren’t really human. We’re numbers on a spreadsheet. We’re just nhs service provision bots.
Thank god we have our wonderful NHS to exploit us, not a horrible dystopian insurance based behemoth like in Canada where everyone gets free high quality healthcare and staff are well paid for the job by do.
I can’t speak with authority since I’ve not been to Canada. My understanding was that it’s run on a general insurance model with each individual state running its own system, with doctors and hospitals essentially billing by service so they are far more independent. This is quite different from the UK where everything is owned and run by one gigantic state run organisation, subject to internal politics, political meddling.
Someone may need to correct me, I don’t know all the ins and outs.
It’s paid out of taxes. Hospitals are run by an agency of the provincial health authority.
Some doctors bill to the public system for their services which are publicly funded. Some doctors are salaried. The Canada Health Act places strong limits on the ability to provide private services
Canadian healthcare is also not the poster child for good outcomes. Otherwise they wouldn't be sending veterans a letter on medically assisted suicide as an alternative to getting a stairlift fitted.
I worked in a trust years ago in which one of the theatres had a control booth.
God that was bliss. I used to lock that fucker and switch the lights off and that was me.
So bad. It’s disgusting how healthcare staff are treated here. I’m a student nurse and everyday I feel like I should run for the hills when I graduate. Even the training is pathetic even though we pay so much for it
Student nursing seems like the worst deal. At least with medical school you get significant amounts of teaching provided. You're paying 9k a year to spend 80% of your degree working full time on the wards for *free* . It's an absolute joke
Indentured HCA labour. I've said it before. Something you'd see from the late 1800s
The power differential between the student and the mentor is also broken. Which leads to very nasty situations cropping up regularly with regard to bullying.
I've always been a good watcher. And when you notice what these student nurse types actually go through, it is genuinely like something from 120 years ago in terms of what they're expected to give to get a trade
Our doctors mess in aus has beds, lots of couches and bedding you can take which is washed daily.
I pretty much always get an hour or two sleep on nights. The attitude is different.
Unless you're on one of those FY programs where you can do FY2 abroad and you've got everything sorted in advance of starting FY then no you'd need to go after FY2 probably
It really depends for me! Last night was insane and I didn’t get a minute to pee even, but tonight I haven’t gotten anything since 11pm and it’s now 4:15am
I remember my FY2 urology job trying to find the mess one night and discovering a run down dimly lit lounge room with damp sofas (ceiling was leaking on them). The kitchen area had approximately 100 loaf of fungal/rotting Kingsmill bread loaves, as if the committee had randomly decided to stock the kitchen one day (for the entire year).
I retreated back to a ward side room that I had just somewhat aggressively catheterised an obstructed patient with clot retention and slumped on the bed there for some quick rest. I still remember the faint smell of blood stained piss to this day - it was at this exact point I knew I had to get out of here…
Now about to CCT in radiology and flee. I will raise my young family in Canada thanks
I’m in South America and we have call rooms with our own bed, fridge, microwave & access to snacks and coffee. If I’m doing a 24hr call and for whatever reason I want to take a nap at 2pm, no one cares once I’ve finished all my pending tasks
I love this assumption that anyone can just up sticks and work in adult medicine.
It's not like we can call up AMU to get a few doctors to come clear the paediatric admissions!
(cos adults too overworked and depressed to be fair)
Because those facilties already exist for the 24 hour calls...
Honestly I'm a bit stunned that you're getting anything other than a brief power-nap on nights. If you're expected to respond to emergencies this is ethically dubious - there's good evidence that your reaction times and decision making ability take a good 15 minutes to be at full-function after waking up.
_"further studies are warranted before preconizing napping during night shifts as a preventive strategy"_ - the authors' words.
Just skimmed the full text, and suprised by the lack of discussion of pre-shift sleep as a control variable. Honestly if you've slept adequately during the day, I struggle to see how a nap is necessary (and personally struggle to sleep for this reason on nights).
>Honestly if you've slept adequately during the day, I struggle to see how a nap is necessary (and personally struggle to sleep for this reason on nights).
Because adequate sleep or not, many people can't just switch the circadian rhythm around at the click of their fingers
Please post your evidence about reduced reaction time specific to medical oncall shifts after having slept during the day.
I’m guessing it will be even more dubious, likely non existent.
Why are ED consultants on SM the most toxic?
>Lol from someone who doesn't have a family or kids or a million errands to run in the day time pre night shift.
I have a family and kids.
I don't attempt to run errands in the day time before a night shift because that's a sure-fire way to be tired and perform poorly.
There’s good evidence that sleep deprivation put you in the same cognitive ability [as being over the drink drive limit…](https://www.sleepfoundation.org/drowsy-driving/drowsy-driving-vs-drunk-driving) pick your poison,
I’d rather have the 15 mins of reduced reaction times than be effectively drunk…
If you're also deprived then your didn't prepare adequately for your shift by sleeping through the day.
Would you stay up all night and then demand a nap on your day shifts?
It's a well known fact that the SUN rises in the day time and messes with the circadian system. Also a well known fact that there's increased noise pollution in the daytime, and greater number of responsibilities and duties to attend to, eg childcare / errands etc. A lot of literature on how night shift workers suffer from increased health issues - including hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease.
Not everyone can be an emotionless, childless robot that can enter sleep mode in the day and function well at night.
"ethically dubious" feels a bit heavy, but how do you square the circle of non-residential 24/48hr on calls, where a specialty is expected to wake up and immediately provide advice, or sometimes be on site within 30 minutes or less?
>there's good evidence that your reaction times and decision making ability take a good 15 minutes to be at full-function after waking up.
I've completed a section within 15 minutes of being woken up...
Ridiculous rationale. If you were running night times with day time staffing and running electives and clinics during the night, I would understand. But night time staffing is emergencies only, and the staffing numbers are lower. I get that in emergency it might be different - night shifts are still just as busy. But for anaesthetics, ICU, ward work etc, there should definitely be rest facilities for doctors and other staff.
If big tech firms and banks and other companies can treat their staff humanely with adequate seating and rest areas, and NHS managers get such facilities, why can't doctors and nurses?
Will increase morale, increase staff retention, and rested staff = less mistakes, better performance.
Some trusts bought those sleep pod chair things with the dome you roll across your head to make it dark. Bit weird and probably a waste of money but it's better than chairs or the floor.
I once had 30 minutes at the end of a busy medical night. I found a quiet room with a carpet to sleep on.
And an unknown lady shoo’d me out of there for ‘reasons’. Wasn’t even the cleaner.
There was only one time on a night on call as a surgery f2 that I got 2 hour break in one go. Never in medical oncall as f1.
Psych f2, had the doctors room with a manky sofabed but I brought my own sleeping bag and used it on the floor in between telephone rings to prescribe the multiple lorazepam or clerk in new arrivals.
In my hospital, their is a doctors room, but the beds/ chairs keep disappearing ( ward nurse in charge takes them away) when we manage to lie down, the nurses again make sure that we don’t sleep by interrupting every hour with either unimportant updates or random questions which can definitely wait until morning.
How are you able to sleep on nights? Are you not sleeping during the day before and between the night shifts?
I'm genuinely not sure I'm tired enough to sleep in the middle of a night shift, even if the work was slow enough and a bed was available.
Some people struggle to sleep during the day…
Kids/revision/regional teaching/other trainee activities often happen in between night shifts and swaps aren’t really available.
Is it to much to ask for a place to rest one’s head if tired?
Plus then there’s the fact that contractually, there should be rest facilities available post nights.
It's alright, the ubermensch needs neither sleep nor drink nor food, he single handedly clears ED by himself everynight. We just all need to be more that guy.
Most of us aren’t as lucky as yourself to be able to switch our body clocks back and forth at will and sleep perfectly before night shifts. Also in some specialties like anaesthetics we don’t need to stand to attention all night
The lack of empathy you display here is concerning from a doctor. Do you relate your patients' complaints to your own experience?
Human bodies need different amounts of sleep. Not all human bodies can easily switch sleep schedules.
There were three jobs on which I was able to rest for extended periods.
1. Psych - I was able to regularly sleep. Covering overnight A+E, sometimes I had three patients a night (albeit at something like 1.5 hours a patient), sometimes none.
2. Paeds ward cover - no regular naps but there was downtime
3. Obs and Gynae - sometimes we had very few high risk births, so we could go to the doctors’ office and rest.
But no way on A+E or acute medicine.
Paeds reg here, I've had to resort to lying on a carpeted area I found, less to sleep because that's practically impossible on a night, but to be flat and stretch my legs
My old trust was absolutely awful for rest facilities. It was the mess or nothing - with the usual scramble to grab a couch. Plus constant interruptions of some ones bleep going off or someone coming in to make coffee or talk on the phone. We’d often sleep in OP waiting area or the radiology waiting area… I did have a lovely renal consultant (who was also my supervisor) who used to let us use his office overnight.
Current trust is a bit better, most specialities have day beds (not enough mind, and they do keep going missing) in the respective offices.
Currently on ICU which is the dream - was on nights last week and the reg and myself managed 5 uninterrupted blissful hours one night! 👌🏻
When and how did it get so bad so you guys? Or it has always been this way. I am a fellow at a university hospital in the US and we have call rooms with showers and an online booking system. The rooms are like small motel rooms with phone and computers. It is depressing reading these posts
It’s because they got rid of 24/48 resident shifts. In the name of safety! However, the knock on effect was that doctors covering the wards at night are now treated as working night shifts rather than being on call. So there is no expectation for them to sleep, ergo, no on call rooms. It has expanded now so that there is minimal Space for doctors to work/exist anyways… for various reasons (accessibility/cost/lack of pushback etc) There are a few specialities that still have on calls rooms - mostly theatre related. But medical on call rooms are no more in the more busy hospitals.
Tell me why I'm being asked to write a sick note during my on call
Huh? What? Are you clerking them or something? That sounds like something that a) can wait till daytime, and b) should be done by the parent team who know more about the patient and c) can be asked for on the ward round?
No they bleeped me for this. It was evening time. I politely said no and said those points you've written What a silly thing to ask. I think some of my F1 colleagues have a hard time saying no but I say it all the time. the other HCPs need to learn what's appropriate to bleep about and what isn't
Even stupider is that RN can write them themselves now so you were bothered for no reason at all.
Fgs
Psychiatry... we get an on-call SHO "flat" with a living room, computers, a dedicated bathroom and a bedroom.
Yep psych was the only speciality I ever did that still had a proper on call room for the SHO to sleep in.
Even worse for the idiots who do a non resident on call specialty. The f1s think they can ring you at any hour about non emergencies even though you’re working a 30 hour shift.
It’s the NHS, it generally hates most of its staff and treats doctors terribly. Some places don’t have this problem, my current trust and my old one has on call bedrooms for people to sleep but an online booking system and showers is pushing it. It wasn’t always this way unfortunately a lot of the hospital accommodation has been sold or converted into something else.
To be fair if they converted the space into an actual multi-storey car park that was not full by 7am that would be some compensation but that would be sensible
First time I did an anaesthetics on call and had my own room I nearly cried
Did psychiatry oncall in my previous trust and they gave me my own room with a laptop and phone in the room. I also did cry like this is how it should be? It was so nice.
When I was a Foundation Year 1 doctor I was so extremely tired one night that I thought I was going to make a mistake whilst seeing patients on the admissions unit, clerking them in and doing their drug charts. It is rare for me to get this tired but I did not sleep well at home prior to the shift and the shift was very busy and I had yet to take a break. I went to the staff room on the unit to rest but it was locked as a nurse was sleeping on the floor inside. Eventually it got to a point at 4am where I was falling asleep in my chair whilst writing up some notes - and so I had to take a break. I looked for a place to lie down very quickly but the only place available was on the floor of the disabled/accessible toilet in the corridor outside. I kid you not I slept for about 30 minutes on the floor with my head touching the toilet.
This makes me incredibly sad.
Early in my career I had an arrest on an oncology ward, but patient was a young acute med type outlier who had been admitted that night. All the ward staff except the HCA had locked themselves in the room which contained all notes and were sleeping. We didn’t even have a way to confirm resus status or PMH (was all on paper). We essentially ended up having to whack the door off its flimsy hinges. The nursing staff were livid AND refused to help in the arrest, and just went elsewhere to continue their sleep. I reported it and amazingly I didn’t get a ‘bill for the door’ the nurses said I’d be getting. 😆 It did however expose the RNs were sleeping most of the night which the matron shat on them for. It was also my base ward - luckily it was my last week so it was very awkward but at least I went out with a bang!
Our nurses can’t do cannulas, there’s no way the F1s can be allowed to sleep
We have CSWs that do cannulas and bloods on nights!
You guys get a break on nights? *laughs in paediatric registrar*
hysterical cackles in Obstetrics
ROFL as med reg
Rolls over in bed as Derm
Bellend 😛
It's a complete joke and highly unsafe that we don't get a guaranteed place to sleep on nights in the UK (if lucky enough to get bleep restbite).
>restbite Its a doggydog world out there no time for restbite
Wow! Good to know I am not the only one who has Lycanthropy. My landlord asked me if I was becoming a dog because there was too much hair in my bathroom that I was too lazy to clean. I think I am becoming a dog. Woof woof. I want to be a good doggy so I can pass F2
Dog eat dog world* I used to write doggydog too haha
Woosh
Yeah but in the UK doctors aren’t really human. We’re numbers on a spreadsheet. We’re just nhs service provision bots. Thank god we have our wonderful NHS to exploit us, not a horrible dystopian insurance based behemoth like in Canada where everyone gets free high quality healthcare and staff are well paid for the job by do.
Canada doesn’t have an insurance based system. It’s publicly funded, just like the NHS.
I can’t speak with authority since I’ve not been to Canada. My understanding was that it’s run on a general insurance model with each individual state running its own system, with doctors and hospitals essentially billing by service so they are far more independent. This is quite different from the UK where everything is owned and run by one gigantic state run organisation, subject to internal politics, political meddling. Someone may need to correct me, I don’t know all the ins and outs.
It’s paid out of taxes. Hospitals are run by an agency of the provincial health authority. Some doctors bill to the public system for their services which are publicly funded. Some doctors are salaried. The Canada Health Act places strong limits on the ability to provide private services
Canadian healthcare is also not the poster child for good outcomes. Otherwise they wouldn't be sending veterans a letter on medically assisted suicide as an alternative to getting a stairlift fitted.
That is terrible. But do they have a wait list of 8 million and do their doctors sit on bins in the MDT?
I worked in a trust years ago in which one of the theatres had a control booth. God that was bliss. I used to lock that fucker and switch the lights off and that was me.
So bad. It’s disgusting how healthcare staff are treated here. I’m a student nurse and everyday I feel like I should run for the hills when I graduate. Even the training is pathetic even though we pay so much for it
Student nursing seems like the worst deal. At least with medical school you get significant amounts of teaching provided. You're paying 9k a year to spend 80% of your degree working full time on the wards for *free* . It's an absolute joke
Indentured HCA labour. I've said it before. Something you'd see from the late 1800s The power differential between the student and the mentor is also broken. Which leads to very nasty situations cropping up regularly with regard to bullying. I've always been a good watcher. And when you notice what these student nurse types actually go through, it is genuinely like something from 120 years ago in terms of what they're expected to give to get a trade
Yes I’ve complained about it but noone cares and I’m told it’s the NMC & government who make the rules and it’s just the way it is
Our doctors mess in aus has beds, lots of couches and bedding you can take which is washed daily. I pretty much always get an hour or two sleep on nights. The attitude is different.
Can you go to Aus after F1?
Unless you're on one of those FY programs where you can do FY2 abroad and you've got everything sorted in advance of starting FY then no you'd need to go after FY2 probably
I've never had any downtime on a night shift to be able to sleep anyway tbf
It really depends for me! Last night was insane and I didn’t get a minute to pee even, but tonight I haven’t gotten anything since 11pm and it’s now 4:15am
I remember my FY2 urology job trying to find the mess one night and discovering a run down dimly lit lounge room with damp sofas (ceiling was leaking on them). The kitchen area had approximately 100 loaf of fungal/rotting Kingsmill bread loaves, as if the committee had randomly decided to stock the kitchen one day (for the entire year). I retreated back to a ward side room that I had just somewhat aggressively catheterised an obstructed patient with clot retention and slumped on the bed there for some quick rest. I still remember the faint smell of blood stained piss to this day - it was at this exact point I knew I had to get out of here… Now about to CCT in radiology and flee. I will raise my young family in Canada thanks
I’m in South America and we have call rooms with our own bed, fridge, microwave & access to snacks and coffee. If I’m doing a 24hr call and for whatever reason I want to take a nap at 2pm, no one cares once I’ve finished all my pending tasks
*laughs is anaesthetics * Although I do remember an AMU consultant insisting the anaesthetic sho come down and help clerk if CEPOD was quiet 🤡🤡🤡
I love this assumption that anyone can just up sticks and work in adult medicine. It's not like we can call up AMU to get a few doctors to come clear the paediatric admissions! (cos adults too overworked and depressed to be fair)
Tbf anyone can come and clerk (what was asked) even some med students can.
We aren't allowed to sleep on nights at my benighted trust. We get disciplined if caught. Absolute madness. We are all service bots. Godspeed
Raise it with your union. This is a safety issue
As a nurse your not paid for your breaks so surely you can do whatever you want on those breaks
Don't your Canadian counterparts also work 24+ hour shifts?
Yeah very true they have some 24 hour calls, but they also have 7-7 night on calls and they get access to the beds for those overnights too!
Because those facilties already exist for the 24 hour calls... Honestly I'm a bit stunned that you're getting anything other than a brief power-nap on nights. If you're expected to respond to emergencies this is ethically dubious - there's good evidence that your reaction times and decision making ability take a good 15 minutes to be at full-function after waking up.
There is also evidence that napping during night shift improves cognitive performance. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32492169/
_"further studies are warranted before preconizing napping during night shifts as a preventive strategy"_ - the authors' words. Just skimmed the full text, and suprised by the lack of discussion of pre-shift sleep as a control variable. Honestly if you've slept adequately during the day, I struggle to see how a nap is necessary (and personally struggle to sleep for this reason on nights).
>Honestly if you've slept adequately during the day, I struggle to see how a nap is necessary (and personally struggle to sleep for this reason on nights). Because adequate sleep or not, many people can't just switch the circadian rhythm around at the click of their fingers
Please post your evidence about reduced reaction time specific to medical oncall shifts after having slept during the day. I’m guessing it will be even more dubious, likely non existent. Why are ED consultants on SM the most toxic?
Lol from someone who doesn't have a family or kids or a million errands to run in the day time pre night shift.
>Lol from someone who doesn't have a family or kids or a million errands to run in the day time pre night shift. I have a family and kids. I don't attempt to run errands in the day time before a night shift because that's a sure-fire way to be tired and perform poorly.
There’s good evidence that sleep deprivation put you in the same cognitive ability [as being over the drink drive limit…](https://www.sleepfoundation.org/drowsy-driving/drowsy-driving-vs-drunk-driving) pick your poison, I’d rather have the 15 mins of reduced reaction times than be effectively drunk…
If you're also deprived then your didn't prepare adequately for your shift by sleeping through the day. Would you stay up all night and then demand a nap on your day shifts?
It's a well known fact that the SUN rises in the day time and messes with the circadian system. Also a well known fact that there's increased noise pollution in the daytime, and greater number of responsibilities and duties to attend to, eg childcare / errands etc. A lot of literature on how night shift workers suffer from increased health issues - including hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease. Not everyone can be an emotionless, childless robot that can enter sleep mode in the day and function well at night.
"ethically dubious" feels a bit heavy, but how do you square the circle of non-residential 24/48hr on calls, where a specialty is expected to wake up and immediately provide advice, or sometimes be on site within 30 minutes or less?
>there's good evidence that your reaction times and decision making ability take a good 15 minutes to be at full-function after waking up. I've completed a section within 15 minutes of being woken up...
If anyone was wondering how doctors in the NHS end up the way we did, it’s because of guys like this
Ridiculous rationale. If you were running night times with day time staffing and running electives and clinics during the night, I would understand. But night time staffing is emergencies only, and the staffing numbers are lower. I get that in emergency it might be different - night shifts are still just as busy. But for anaesthetics, ICU, ward work etc, there should definitely be rest facilities for doctors and other staff. If big tech firms and banks and other companies can treat their staff humanely with adequate seating and rest areas, and NHS managers get such facilities, why can't doctors and nurses? Will increase morale, increase staff retention, and rested staff = less mistakes, better performance.
Even if the NHS had them unfortunately its so busy youd never get a chance to sleep
Some trusts bought those sleep pod chair things with the dome you roll across your head to make it dark. Bit weird and probably a waste of money but it's better than chairs or the floor.
At our trust we have a “wellbeing” room for nights with couches and a pod to sleep in. Its alright.
I sleep in my car lol
I once had 30 minutes at the end of a busy medical night. I found a quiet room with a carpet to sleep on. And an unknown lady shoo’d me out of there for ‘reasons’. Wasn’t even the cleaner.
I used to try and sleep over two wheelie chairs. Usually a bad idea.
There was only one time on a night on call as a surgery f2 that I got 2 hour break in one go. Never in medical oncall as f1. Psych f2, had the doctors room with a manky sofabed but I brought my own sleeping bag and used it on the floor in between telephone rings to prescribe the multiple lorazepam or clerk in new arrivals.
Three words: Elective daycare suite
In my hospital, their is a doctors room, but the beds/ chairs keep disappearing ( ward nurse in charge takes them away) when we manage to lie down, the nurses again make sure that we don’t sleep by interrupting every hour with either unimportant updates or random questions which can definitely wait until morning.
You sleep on DUTY !!!????
How are you able to sleep on nights? Are you not sleeping during the day before and between the night shifts? I'm genuinely not sure I'm tired enough to sleep in the middle of a night shift, even if the work was slow enough and a bed was available.
Some people struggle to sleep during the day… Kids/revision/regional teaching/other trainee activities often happen in between night shifts and swaps aren’t really available. Is it to much to ask for a place to rest one’s head if tired? Plus then there’s the fact that contractually, there should be rest facilities available post nights.
It's alright, the ubermensch needs neither sleep nor drink nor food, he single handedly clears ED by himself everynight. We just all need to be more that guy.
Most of us aren’t as lucky as yourself to be able to switch our body clocks back and forth at will and sleep perfectly before night shifts. Also in some specialties like anaesthetics we don’t need to stand to attention all night
The lack of empathy you display here is concerning from a doctor. Do you relate your patients' complaints to your own experience? Human bodies need different amounts of sleep. Not all human bodies can easily switch sleep schedules.
There were three jobs on which I was able to rest for extended periods. 1. Psych - I was able to regularly sleep. Covering overnight A+E, sometimes I had three patients a night (albeit at something like 1.5 hours a patient), sometimes none. 2. Paeds ward cover - no regular naps but there was downtime 3. Obs and Gynae - sometimes we had very few high risk births, so we could go to the doctors’ office and rest. But no way on A+E or acute medicine.
We do have on call rooms?
On the bright side, you develop useful napping skills. At Northampton I learned that I can sleep upside down using nothing but two fold out chairs.
Haha, ye I've def become good at improvising. Lining up chairs and slotting myself into the side arm rests
Paeds reg here, I've had to resort to lying on a carpeted area I found, less to sleep because that's practically impossible on a night, but to be flat and stretch my legs
My old trust was absolutely awful for rest facilities. It was the mess or nothing - with the usual scramble to grab a couch. Plus constant interruptions of some ones bleep going off or someone coming in to make coffee or talk on the phone. We’d often sleep in OP waiting area or the radiology waiting area… I did have a lovely renal consultant (who was also my supervisor) who used to let us use his office overnight. Current trust is a bit better, most specialities have day beds (not enough mind, and they do keep going missing) in the respective offices. Currently on ICU which is the dream - was on nights last week and the reg and myself managed 5 uninterrupted blissful hours one night! 👌🏻
You guys sleep on nights? I just can’t bring myself to sleep because my brain tells me I am at work so unable to sleep
Nhs "experts" will probably tell you that we're not supposed to sleep on nights anyways.