Whilst I lived my new adventures, I slowly came back to my love for medicine. I started missing the hospital work. And please call me crazy, I would not contradict, I even missed nightshifts.
Weird? Maybe. And that is why. I love the mysterious, absurd atmosphere that is hanging around the hospital like a shiny cloud in the dark. How it is covered by a layer of never sleeping machinery, even though it turns all quiet on the outside.
No wonder that my favourite ever TV-series was Twin Peaks. Late night hospitals give me the same feeling sometimes. When you are a neurologist you might even be lucky and get to see patients talking backwards. Time for emergency CT-scan, or Benzodiazepines.
The work in itself is more efficient, focussing on matters to keep everyone alive and optimally sleeping instead of paperwork. Phones do not ring quiet as often and if it is not urgent, it can be postponed to day time. There is more autonomy and a very different interdisciplinary cooperation. No matter if nurse, physician or surgeon, at night you are all in this together and nobody gets to leave the ship. Often it is just easier to join forces, then have coffee and cigarettes and a laugh.
In times it felt like a school trip. A bunch of young kids left alone to what we could not even believe was true. We were on our own, responsible for a whole lot of lives. Of course we did take this seriously, but could they take us seriously? I think the adrenaline rush was just better than the occasional joint from the past.
So when a good friend forwarded me a request from an employment agency for temporary work in neurology at a hospital in southern Germany, there was no need for a lot of thinking. I did not even believe I would make a chance. But anyway I tried, sent my documents and made sure I called them to confirm.
I got one week, 5 nights. I still could not believe it.
Time went by quickly and while looking forward, anxiety was creeping in on me as well. Nine months had gone by since I actually worked with neurologic patients. Would I still be able to do it? Did I not forget everything I previously learned? Could I still perform under pressure? Would I make irreversible mistakes? I just hoped nobody would die.
Memories from the past came up. I woke at night from dreams of meningitis and strokes, thinking of antibiotics and bleeding after lysis. It made me remember waking up to a ringing phone, with seconds of reorientation that felt like ages. Where am I? What is happening? What do I have to do? Was this the right decision? Or hearing the sound of my alarm in the morning, panicking about possibly having missed a call. And all that would happen now in a hospital I did not know, with people I did not know, running a software I did not know. What the hell was I thinking??
I can tell you now, it all went fine, nobody died, everyone made it over the week, including me. It was even a lot of fun. I did have to think about things a bit longer in the beginning. Writing a status did not flow as easy as it used to, but it all came back quickly. Colleagues were extremely nice.The software was easy to get used to. Patients were the same as always. The paroxysmal vertigo, migraines, the occasional alcoholic seeing rain in the room and the agitated gomer. Just as it used to be. Just with an end to it, which made a huge difference. It felt like holidays, just a short road trip to what I used to do in the past.
In the end it made me rethink again: I am a doctor. I love it. It is what I want to be.
Find a detailed job profile on nightshift temporary employment here.
DocSpiration 