After a nightshift in A&E, I’m so tired I fear for my life driving home. I’m not alone Other professions offer taxis home for night workers. But cost-cutting in the NHS means there are no facilities for exhausted staff. Lives are at risk• Saleyha Ahsan is an A&E doctor
Around 4am on an A&E nightshift I begin to think about the drive home. It’s the time at which I’m feeling my worst, digging deep to keep working at somewhere near optimum. There are only four hours left before I go home but those four hours stretch in some weird nightshift time continuum. It’s also the time when the sickest patients tend to come into the department – the “death hour”. There is a requirement to shift into a higher gear of working as we try to save the lives of people who have woken up to die.
When I say that I fleetingly think about the drive home, it’s not because I’m counting down the hours until I finish. I’m thinking more along the lines of, “I am knackered. How am I going to drive home without crashing into a tractor or something?” You start to think about your own mortality. It’s not a baseless fear – 57% of doctors in the position have said they’ve had an accident or near-miss. Continue reading... The Guardian
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