Was on rostered overtime at Campbelltown last night with Jaz. We were both run off our feet despite thinking it'd be cruisy since there's only 3 wards to cover between the 2 of us there.
Finally cleared the boards on the medical and surgical wards around 10pm when we decided to head over to the psych unit to review a patient. They had called us earlier that evening to see this guy who had apparently decided to start banging his head against a concrete wall repeatedly and who now had headache, vomiting and blurred vision. We had been kinda delaying seeing him because:
1. who wants to see a crazy psych patient right before ending a shift?
2. didn't fancy the guy getting agro or something towards us...
3. going to the psych unit actually involves leaving the main hospital complex and trudging a hundred or so metres in the cold and dark...
Anyhow, since we could no longer give any excuses as to why we still hadn't reviewed the patient, we decided the 2 of us should be able to handle this psych patient.
Turns out the guy hadn't banged his head against a wall, but had just punched himself in the forehead with his fists. Ok...so maybe not so crazy but still crazy! He said that he had been hearing voices and wanted them to stop. Fair enough I guess... We did the most rudimentary neuro exam and decided that he was "medically stable". Said goodnight to the psych staff and thought that our busy shift had finally come to an end.
That was until we got back to the entrance to the hospital to find it locked.
The sign on the door said "After hours please ring bell <----" Except that there was no bell to ring! Jaz and I searched around the doorway looking for a swipey card access thingy or something to let ourselves in but to no avail...
Ended up calling switch and explaining our predicament. We could hear switch explaining our situation to someone else and probably thinking "Those silly interns...!!" For some reason or other, security had something better to do than come and let us in so they told us to find the tunnel leading from the psych unit to the main hospital block.
Jaz and I looked at each other blankly and laughed!
Somehow they expected us to find what sounded like some obscure secret passageway leading from the psych unit to the main hospital block in the dark!
We trudged back over to the psych unit and actually found the tunnel straight away. We followed it to its end to find a door. Another locked door!
By this time we were thinking about just walking all the way around the hospital to the main entrance at the front. But amidst our aimless wandering, we spotted 2 doors with swipey card access thingies next to them! Tried the first door and but the stupid reader denied us access. Tried the second door and hey presto! It opened without even having to swipe a card! So much for security!
Thence ended a long and tiring day. To top things off, I spent the night in a freezer that is Campbelltown Hospital's overnight accommodation for its medical officers. The bed only had one blanket a sheet and by golly I was shivering all throughout the night...! There was a fan heater there but when I turned it on, the fan wasn't working and the element began to light up real bright and I seriously thought the heater would blow up so I quickly turned it off...
The 1.5 hrs of driving each day are definitely worth it...
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