On-Call

Here’s a Jeopardy question for you: Name an event that includes the following-a set of clothes sitting on the dresser, a cellphone ringer set on high, a fridge stocked with foods you can cook in less than 10 minutes, and a car with a full tank of gas.

The question is: What is “being on call.”

On call can be the best or worst thing ever. On the positive side, you can make oodles of money. I know a girl who once paid for her entire yearly vacation off the money she made off a few weekend call shifts. Not too shabby! On the negative side, you may not get to sleep like…ever.

If you’re a worrier like me, call is your worst nightmare. Even if I never get called in, I still tire myself out by obsessively checking my phone (OMG did it ring while I was gone for 30 seconds to pee??), imagining worst case scenarios (What if a ruptured aortic aneurysm comes in? ACK!), and eating everything I can get my hands on since lord only knows if/when I’ll have time to eat. To some degree, the worrying is kind of helpful because no matter what happens on call, it never lives up to the catastrophic nightmares I’ve built up in my head.

This past weekend was my first weekend on call at my new job. It was a 48-hour stint starting Saturday and 7AM and ending Monday morning at 7AM. It was, by far, the longest weekend of my life. I’ve heard people with kids jokingly say; “I need to go back to work so I can relax.” It’s hard to explain, but during my second call case Sunday night I was thinking, “Boy, I need to get out of work, so I can get back to work, so I can relax.” And wouldn’t you know it, after 48 hours of call, I woke up Monday morning bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and ready to face a “normal” workday in the OR.

So why would you want to be on call? For one, you probably don’t have a choice (unless you’re one of those people who work in a cushy day surgery center. Just kidding, I totally love you guys). When it comes to tech jobs, call generally comes with the territory. You might be able to pawn off your call to other people (which is my usual ploy), but there aren’t always takers. Say you can’t off-load your call shifts. Now what? Well I say, look on the bright side. There’s a lot you can learn.

For me, being on call helped me speed up my set-up time. I am ungodly slow when it comes to setting up. I like to putz around, making sure everything is lined up just so. On call, sometimes your patient is being wheeled into the room before you’ve even gotten a single instrument on your mayo! It didn’t take long to realize the leisurely pace I’d grown accustomed to on day shifts wouldn’t cut it at 4AM when someone’s appendix decides to rupture.

Being on call makes you more independent and able to think on your feet. It’s midnight. It’s just you, your circulator, and your surgeon. Someone’s wheeled in having lost a few fingers in a fight with a lawnmower. What do you need OMG RIGHT NOW? How creative can you get with the instruments in your general ortho tray to make some immediate progress while your circulator runs around grabbing all the special crap you’ll need to put a hand back together? Maybe you’ve never worked with a microscope or a metacarpal joint fusion system, but guess what? You’re going to figure it out because that’s the only option you’ve got! Suck it up, Buttercup.

Being oncall brings you closer to your team. You might think you know your fellow techs and nurses. You may even hit up Happy Hour now and again to commiserate about work and life. I’m telling you, after you’ve been dragged out of bed in the middle of the night to care for extremely ill patients with potentially life-threatening conditions with no support except for each other, that is the moment when you really bond with your teammates. Recently, I was oncall with a tech I’d never worked with. (We’d probably said 3 words to each other since I started.) It was a rough night with a gallbladder gone horribly wrong and he spent most of the case running for supplies. I was super impressed with his hustle and attitude and I thanked him when we finally closed. We haven’t become BFF’s or anything, but now we smile at each other in the hallway and have started talking more. Running a challenging call case together helped open the lines of communication with my coworker. Pretty cool.

Ultimately, being on call isn’t inherently good or evil. Call is just another part of tech life that you’ll embrace (or not) along with such joys as working holidays or getting covered in people-bits. Just remember when on call:

• Eat when you can

• Sleep when you get the chance

• And when you’re tired and crabby and ready to throw in the towel, remember that your patient is counting on you to be a your best regardless of the hour or how many cases you’ve done that day/night

Until next week, stay sterile, my friends…