Kirk’s Blog

Weekend On-call

It was my turn to be on call this weekend. We rotate the hospital duties for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. We also split up the rounding on the wards a just focus on those that need to be seen. Both Saturday and Sunday I probably quickly rounded on 30-40 patients in a few hours and as far as I know they are all still alive.

I was pleasantly suprised with the amount of sleep I was able to get. A night on call at home does not guarentee any sleep and I had at least 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep each night.    Last night I was covering the emergency room.  I was called from our evening church service because an 8-year old had been hit by a car, which is not suprising given how many children I have seen wondering around on the streets.  In general the kid looked pretty well, but her upper arm was clearly injured and deformed.  I could not quite tell by exam if the arm had a displaced fracture or a dislocated shoulder.  We called the X-ray technician on call to come in to the hospital, but they did not answer their phone and neither did the back-up technician.  So unfortunately this poor kid had to sleep in the ER infested with mosquitos waiting for an X-ray in the morning.  The x-ray confirmed my suspicion of a displaced fracture the following morning.

One other interesting phenomenon is the frequency of power outages.  The lights in the whole town (including the hospital) go off for a few random seconds most nights.  On windy days the lights go off very frequently, every few minutes.  Lisa and I have decided that the power is generated by a guy riding a bicycle.  Every now and then he gets tired and has to switch with another rider.  When he switches the power goes out (randomly).  Now anyone that has ever ridden a bike knows that it is much more difficult on windy days so they have to switch bike riders much more frequently leading to the increased power outages.  I cannot verify that this theory is true but it makes sense.  Last night as I was stitching a facial laceration by a guys eye and the lights kept going out I could have used a stronger bike rider.