D-day: The Tides have Turned

From the above title, one could be forgiven for thinking this will be a post about war and the reclaiming of ground lost. The storming of the French coastline in order to liberate the European continent from it's oppressors which turned the tide of the war and eventually led to the Allied victory.

Well it's not a post about that. Although there are many similarities.

For the past few weeks I have been fighting a war. And it has notbeen going in my favour.

I started this term with a fairly big inpatient list for surgery (anything over 10 qualifies as a 'huge' surgical inpatient list) and have never been able to shrink it. In fact if anything it has gotten worse with last Friday's AMO count reaching 15 inpatients.

It was looking bad. All the wide old RMOs were telling me how Urology was renowned for 'not' having many patients and how I must be doing something wrong.

Well today was the day that Dr J struck back. It was the day he regained that lost ground and the tides turned on his bad fortune in the inpatient stakes.

I managed to discharge all of the 15 from last week except for 3 so that now I am left with a trio of stable easy to manage patients.

Contributing to my agnst over the past weeks was a 102-day-stayer who had PE's and haemorrhages requiring ICU (x2). It seemed no one could budge him. The old Uro intern tried and failed. I tried once, only to have him pee blood everywere and go into ICU the very day he had his bags packed to leave hospital. So finally, after extensive hours of discharge plannning I personally escorted him to his vehicle and carried his bags for him, lest he trip and end up with a # NOF or something.

We estimate he cost close to $100,000 in taxpayers money over the last few months (at a conservative estimate) and now to celebrate his departure the reg's are shouting me and the old intern dinner next week to say thankyou.

For the first time in 6 weeks things are looking quiet. Tomorrow I look forward to taking a nice long lunchbreak and a few 'coffee-breaks' too. This is making things bearable. I no longer feel like jumping off the helipad each day. I can look forward to some uncomplicated theatre time without the incessant paging from the wards. Ahhh!

Speaking of which, I had my interview with the Director of Clinical Training yesterday. These informal chats are supposed to see if we are coping ok and whether or not we need help. So our DCT (who looks uncannily like John Candy) sat me down and began:

"So how are you finding The Zoo?" (monotone)

"Um yeah its ok, I..."

"So what do you wanna specialise in?"

"Well I was thinking either GP or Paeds, although..."

"So do you wanna come back next year?"

"I'd like to."

"Thanks for coming, Bye!"

He really should have been a surgeon and not an ED consultant.