Northerner
Admin (Retired)
- Relationship to Diabetes
- Type 1
A senior registrar at an NHS teaching hospital gives an account of a night shift, handling life, death and too many trivial decisions.
I am a senior registrar A&E doctor in a major teaching hospital. I qualified over 10 years ago and have been an A&E doctor for three quarters of my career. On most daytime shifts, I am in charge of a section of our department, such as the resuscitation room, majors, minor injuries, children’s A&E or clinical decision unit; when I work night shifts, I am in charge of the entire department, covering all those areas.
The difficulties we are facing this winter arise from patient and population factors, issues around senior staffing of A&E departments, and problems with the broader health and social care system. Most of the difficulties are not new, but the chronic strain they have been putting on the system for years has, for many reasons, been felt particularly acutely in 2014. It’s being called a winter crisis, but the summer of 2014 was the most difficult I have seen in my career; winter is only making matters that little bit worse – and so far, we are lucky that there has not been a big spike in influenza cases.
I’ll try to explain the problems using the format of a diary of a typical night shift in my A&E department.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/...ving-night-nhs-hospital-a-and-e-doctors-story
I am a senior registrar A&E doctor in a major teaching hospital. I qualified over 10 years ago and have been an A&E doctor for three quarters of my career. On most daytime shifts, I am in charge of a section of our department, such as the resuscitation room, majors, minor injuries, children’s A&E or clinical decision unit; when I work night shifts, I am in charge of the entire department, covering all those areas.
The difficulties we are facing this winter arise from patient and population factors, issues around senior staffing of A&E departments, and problems with the broader health and social care system. Most of the difficulties are not new, but the chronic strain they have been putting on the system for years has, for many reasons, been felt particularly acutely in 2014. It’s being called a winter crisis, but the summer of 2014 was the most difficult I have seen in my career; winter is only making matters that little bit worse – and so far, we are lucky that there has not been a big spike in influenza cases.
I’ll try to explain the problems using the format of a diary of a typical night shift in my A&E department.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/...ving-night-nhs-hospital-a-and-e-doctors-story