24 Hours in the OR

Yesterday was my first 24 hour operating room call. I have had to do other overnight OR scheduled time before but this was the first time I was scheduled for an entire day. Being a Saturday night and a holiday weekend made for several interesting cases.

During the day on Saturday we were busy with pick up ortho cases that were left over from the weeks work. Nothing to big just a couple of ankle fracture repairs, an elbow and an incision and drainage of a big old abscess. Nothing like the night to come.

I thought that the Los Angeles County hospital had all of the action but I was mistaken. It seems there were a few parties that got out-of-hand and friends started shooting friends, brothers started stabbing brothers and what not. We had two ORs going until the very early morning. At 03:45 we broke the two ORs for 15 minutes and then the final gun shot wound came up. It seems this guy was shot through and through across his hips taking out some of his bowel – he had blood in his stool. This case ended up pretty messy and did not finish until 6:45 just 15 minutes before I was scheduled to leave. Oh joy I can go home now.

All in all for the 24 hour schedule I did 6 cases, a couple of them fairly long. I did get an hour nap Saturday afternoon around 4 O’clock so it was not too bad. Looking at the coming schedule I will be doing another overnighter next week and the following week another 24 hour shift on the weekend. Gladly it is not a holiday weekend and maybe the natives will not be too restless.