Done with trauma!

It only took me three extra hours to get out of the hospital in the end, which I was kind of resigned to, considering it’s the middle of Labor Day weekend (a fact I only realized when the ER staff started commenting on the number of people who started their drinking spree early, and thus showed up in the ER earlier in the day than usual). In addition to the usual deluge of traumas at the nominal signout time (nominal, because there’s a better than 50% chance that something major will happen five minutes before or after), I felt like I had to stay and tidy up every single loose end on my patients before I could leave, since I won’t be back to fix it tomorrow.

I won’t be back to fix it tomorrow. I’m not even going to look in the direction of trauma for the next two months. I won’t even have to interact with that monster of a service on call. I don’t care how many foreboding warnings I’ve been given about my next service, it’s not trauma, and that’s all that matters right now.

Funny, though. I like the trauma bay (getting the patient, having to figure out very quickly which of their complaints are serious or lifethreatening and which aren’t), I like the workup (lots of CTs to look at, the responsibility to page through all of them, because whenever the radiologist gets around to reading it, it will be too late for most things if we don’t see it first), and I like the ICU care (paying attention to details, seeing people get better, get off the ventilator) – but somehow I don’t like the sum. If we could skip rounding with the attending, it would be quite nice. Hmm. . . don’t see that happening.

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