Merry Christmas...

Just got back from New Year's break. We had 4 days off, and in order to make this happen I had to work three calls in a row. I'm not sure if it was worth it, although I had a great time visiting my parents in Miami Beach, FL. My sister lives there with her family and on New Year's day my brother and his family flew in. It was great spending time with everyone and especially with my niece and nephew who are 2 years old and 15 months old respectively.

I had overnight call on Dec 22nd, Dec 25th, Dec 27th, and Dec 30th. It was a brutal series of days spent at the hospital and I worked for 97 hours over the week (a generous estimation, it was probably more.) I survived. I guess the hours are what it used to be like for surgery residents before the implementation of the 80 hour work week, but let me write down some statistics about the call in order to compare.

Number of pages per call: Average 71.25 (37, 64, 81, and 103 listed by call)
Number of consults seen: Average 14.25 (6, 12, 26, and 13 listed by call)
Number of cases scrubbed: Average 2.75 (1, 1, 4, and 5 listed by call)

It was a toss-up between Dec 27th and Dec 30th as to which was a tougher call. We had 26 consults on the 27th, but there were less pages. We only had 13 consults on the 30th, but there was 103 nursing calls and 5 long cases. I almost lost it at the end, but appreciated the days off. I'm starting out the first day back with a call, but look forward to one week off for vacation later in the month...

Next call: Jan 5.