Anonymous Doctor

It's the middle of the night, so anything goes.

Gloves, masks, double-checking the medication labels... no one's watching!

I don't mean to criticize the nurses, because being a nurse means a lot of messy and unpleasant work, many of the nurses work hard, and this isn't just a nurse problem, it's a doctor problem too...

But, somehow, all of the careful procedures and protocol that happen during the day magically disappear when it's 2AM and no one's around except for the lonely intern, asleep in the call room.

A lot of, "I just did this-- can you put in the order?" calls. Or, "Yeah, I think we gave him that medication, but I forgot to write it down." Or, "Did we get those results back from the lab?? I don't even think we sent the sample TO the lab yet!"

And I'm not sure I saw anyone wash their hands between midnight and 6AM, which isn't just a problem for the patients, but a problem for the people with dirty hands too. I wash my hands a thousand times a day, because I don't want to get sick if I don't have to. And I don't get any sick days anyway.

Which is another thing that seems pretty silly. We get zero sick days. If we're sick, and we can't come to work, we have to make up the day-- in the huge amount of free time we get, of course. Our one-day weekends! So of course the incentive is not to take a sick day unless you literally can't get out of bed. Which means sick doctors roaming the halls... potentially giving patients all sorts of new illnesses.

If there's one profession we should want sick people to stay home from, isn't it doctors?

Fortunately it's not as if doctors are likely to get sick, since it's not like we're around sick people all day.