Which is actually more like a night in the life, but whatevs. Same diff.
All right, so, my "day in the life" post for my OB clerkship is coming to you in two parts, as the rotation itself is split in half - three weeks of obstetrics and three weeks of gynecology. This post probably doesn't highlight the most typical day, as I kept forgetting I needed to document my life for one of these posts and ended up waiting until the last night of my week on night float [and thus my last shift on labor and delivery in general] to make anything happen. So this was kind of a long, backwards day overall, but it turned out to be pretty busy, at least, so you'll get a pretty decent idea of what a shift on labor & delivery could look like.
8:49 PM - let's call this my "good morning" face. I got stuck wasting some of my daytime sleeping hours waiting for someone to come fix my internet [after FOUR DAYS of no service following a storm] so this is not exactly me at my most rested. Boyfriend is a sweetheart and runs out to pick up dinner for us as a treat while I hop in the shower and work on making myself feel functional.
9:35 PM - time for some last minute getting ready, as I have about ten minutes before I have to head to the hospital.
Tonight's snacks - my supplies are running low, and I'm already dreaming of going to the grocery store over the weekend.
9:51 PM - Working nights means I get to park in the resident lot instead of the normal student lot down the road [which involves taking a shuttle to the actual hospital]; this week has left me feeling quite spoiled in that regard. I head inside to the boardroom to drop off my stuff and spend a few minutes talking to my classmates who are just finishing up the 2-10pm shift.
10:15 PM - I'm in the screening room [our ER for pregnant ladies at 20+ weeks] seeing a patient in for a minor complaint [most of these ladies present to the screening room because they're tired of being pregnant and hoping to be delivered]. I get an HPI and do a quick physical on my own, and then check her cervix with my resident to make sure that everything is still closed like it should be.
10:40 PM - We're up on the postpartum floor checking in on one of the new moms who needs some orders written for medication...which of course means a bunch of paperwork, because hospitals are fun like that.
10:59 PM - Heading back down from the postpartum floor to the evaluation center [our ER for kids, GYN complaints, and pregnant ladies <20 weeks]. We normally have a midwife helping to cover the EC at night, but as she's out on vacation this week it's mostly just the intern and I running all over the hospital to hold down the fort. My job as the medical student is to see the patients first, take a quick history, do a quick physical exam, and present all of this info to the intern so that we, as a team, can work more efficiently.
Taking a break to make faces in the stairwell. Obviously an important part of the evening.
11:04 PM - Walk back over the screening room to see another patient. Then walk back to the EC. Then back to the screening room. Rinse and repeat.
12:20 AM - We're finally getting around to discharging the first girl I saw in the screening room. Between the doctor being pulled in like 5 different directions, and needing to keep everyone on the fetal monitors for at least 20 minutes to get a good fetal heart rate recording, the process of seeing a patient in the screening room can take up a pretty good chunk of time.
12:30 AM - We head back over the EC to do a transvaginal ultrasound on one of the patients in order to get fetal heart tones to record in her chart. She's pretty early on in pregnancy so it takes a lot of maneuvering in order to pick up something definitive. We end up having a discussion with the parents-to-be about Pokemon Go, as the dad had just come back in from wandering around in search of Pokemon while they were waiting.
1:23 AM - Back in the boardroom to hang out for a bit while the action has temporarily died down. The upper level residents have gotten into watching Jane the Virgin on Netflix this week, so I've been alternating my time between studying and paying attention to the show [which I've seen before but still love].
2:38 AM - I walk with my resident back over the screening room to watch her do an ultrasound on a patient who's being admitted. She's expecting twins, so we need to check the presentation of the babies [head down vs. breech] to determine if she can be delivered vaginally or if she'll need a C-section.
3:43 AM - I'm back in the boardroom, working on writing out prescriptions for the postpartum patients we're expecting to discharge later that morning. This is one of those little tasks that falls under the category of "helpful things the med students can do" and can get quite tedious if you're discharging a bunch of patients because each typically goes home with 4 standard 'scripts.
4:13 AM - Time for a delivery! I go grab boots and masks for the two of us while my resident heads into the delivery room to talk to the patient and nurses and see how everything is going.
5:51 AM - Time to head home! Getting to watch the sunrise every morning has been a nice perk of working night float this week.
5:59 AM - I check my mail and pop by Boyfriend's place to say good morning as he's waking up and getting ready for work. We conveniently live in the same apartment complex now that I've moved to midtown, which is nice because we can still see each other easily even though we're both back to being busy.
8:33 AM - Lounging around in bed while catching up on unREAL, since I forgot the new season had started while I was on vacation. Since this was my last night on night float, I have to work on returning to some semblance of a normal daytime dweller schedule.
I have the intention of making it to our lunchtime lecture today before returning home to take a nap, but I end up passing out sometime during the morning and sleeping through the whole thing. Oops.
1:40 PM - I finally drag myself out of bed and make a quick sandwich to eat, since by this point in the day I'm starving. I do a couple of loads of laundry and wash dishes and other sorts of productive adulting type things. I'm mostly putting off doing actual work related to school and studying, as it feels like a weird day and I'm not in the mood to do a lot of mental heavy lifting.
5:11 PM - I take a break from being lazy to do a quick workout. I've switched over from studio classes to a Barre3 online subscription for the time being, as my schedule has gotten a lot more variable thanks to third year. I'm working on getting myself back into some sort of routine in regards to exercise, but a lot of days I'm just tired when I got home and don't end up moving much after changing out of my scrubs and plopping onto my couch. Today I pick out one of the 40 minute workouts from the subscription library and find myself feeling pretty good about life by the end of it.
6:45 PM - Watching old lectures posted to Tegrity for us as part of studying. This week's topic has been Gynecology, and I'm trying to get myself ready for our TBL the next day.
7:30 PM - Boyfriend comes over to make dinner [salmon + rice + veggies]; after dinner we hang out for a bit and watch a few episodes of Family Feud, which has kind of become our evening routine as of late.
9:20 PM - I print off a couple of ACOG practice bulletins on gynecologic topics to read over for tomorrow. Yay for didactics on Friday mornings! But not really!
10:15 PM - Time to get ready for bed. I take a shower and brush my teeth and all of that fun stuff before climbing into bed and reading the chapter on pelvic floor disorders out of my textbook.
10:50 PM - Lights out.