Never fails

Last night was my first night of "After Hours Urgent Care." What that means is that I (along with 2 other seniors and an intern) see emergent, urgent, and/or walk-in patients from 4-11 pm on weeknights, and either 7 am-4 pm or 3-11 pm on weekends. What that also means is that a patient that arrives at 10:59 pm is my responsibility, and a patient that arrives at 11:00 pm is dealt with by the overnight students on CCU. So, imagine my surprise (sarcasm) when yesterday I saw not a single patient between orientation at 3 pm and almost the end of my shift at 10:50 pm -- when, of course, a young vomiting Labrador with a history of dietary indiscretion walked in the door. Of course, he needed x-rays of his belly as well as some bloodwork, all of which took a couple hours, then I had to set him up for hospitalization for the rest of the night and finish his paperwork. So after sitting around killing time for 7+ hours, I got to stay 2.5 hours past the end of my shift! And woke up at 11:30 this morning with a killer headache. The only upside is that, for some cases that are admitted in the evening and stay in the hospital until morning, the urgent care student whose case it is has to come back at 7 am to re-evaluate the patient, complete morning paperwork, call the owner with an update, and transfer the case to a specialty service within the hospital. At least I got out of that with this dog. The next 2 weeks could be a lot of "fun"!