Night float

It's almost 2 AM and I'm camped out in what passes for a "hotel room" in our hospital. It looks more like a drab dorm room: narrow twin bed, non-functional lamp, cramped desk. Even the alarm clock is broken. Tonight's my second of fourteen nights on night float and my pager has been relatively quiet but I can't sleep because a) ever the pessimist, I drank an enormous quantity of coffee four hours ago and b) I'm waiting for a repeat hematocrit on a bleeding patient, anxiously refreshing and refreshing my computer screen.


Night float is a necessary evil in medical training. In years past, before new limits on duty hours for residents were adopted, the on-call resident handled cross-cover and admissions, but this genius system resulted in marathon shifts lasting far longer than the supposedly enlighted 30 hour maximum that's the current standard. So now we have night float and for the next two weeks, I'm it. My shift starts around 8 PM and lasts until the primary interns and residents return to the hospital in the morning to resume care of their patients. I cover patients for 12 doctors overnight -- typically about 80 -- but I'm not responsible for admitting new patients. All night long, I answer pages about Ambien and hypotension, I follow-up on recommendations made by subspecialty consultants, and I see and evaluate patients for whatever comes up overnight: pain, agitation, abnormal vital signs.


Night float is generally considered to be a pretty miserable time, and so far, I'd say that's right. It's lonely, it's boring, it's annoying, it's frightening. The good stuff about residency -- the honor of a patient's trust, the commaradie among residents, the satisfaction in mastering a new skill -- is essentially absent. What's left is the chaff of residency: paperwork, a never-ending succession of pages, uncertainty and inadequacy. For instance, I just took a break from writing this post to see a patient downstairs who's nauseated and vomiting. I have no idea why he's vomiting. A quick review of his chart reveals that the vomiting is a new problem for him, so the doctors who know him well haven't left me any clues. He could have an infection, or the vomiting could be the result of his kidney disease, or maybe it's from the medicines we're giving him. I suppose he could have an entirely new problem: heart attacks and pancreatitis can cause vomiting. So can a million other conditions, like migraine headaches, toxic exposures, small bowel obstructions. But my patient doesn't have a fever or an elevated white blood count. He's getting regular dialysis that appears to be adequate. He has no additional symptoms like chest pain, abdominal pain, headache. So here I am. Other than medication to treat his nausea and a couple of simple blood tests that I don't expect to be spectacularly revealing, I'm not sure what to do. It's now 3 AM and frankly 7 can't come soon enough.