Death Stalks The Wards...In The Form Of The Medical SHO

O what cheer! O what joy! The AMU block has begun. This is the (heavy) price I pay for scarcely having done any on-calls in this job. Now it's pay-back time: an epic, three-week medeley of long-days, weekends and nights spread between A&E, the acute admissions unit and the wards.

I got off to a flying start this weekend, with ample chance to put my Oncology skills to good use. Everywhere I went previously well people suddenly gasped their last and karked it. My mere presence on a ward, it seemed, was enough to send blood presssures plummeting and resp rates rising. Within my 8 hour shift, I made 5 people 'comfortable' (i.e. knocked them out of it with a morphine and midazolam syringe driver); informed 4 families their relatives had taken a 'drastic turn for the worse' (i.e. they're dead); made 2 people not for resuss (i.e. they're about to die and I'm too tired to do chest compressions); and attended 2 crash calls (i.e. assisted in closing the stable door after the horse had bolted).

Well, at least at this rate I'll have the hospital's bed crisis single-handedly sorted in no time!