Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everyone! And let me tell you, people celebrated! Wednesday before New Year's eve was not too bad in the hospital, but they certainly started rolling in on New Year's eve. In fact, they started coming in around 9am and really just kept coming for the next 24hrs. Fortunately I anticipated this and had a big push for any possible discharges that could be done the day before. That actually cut our list down to half. But on New Year's eve, a new one came in about every 30 minutes during the day and there were 20+ new admissions overnight. That's a whole bunch of new people to round on the next day. But I'm sure it could still be worse.

So let me say, I just do not understand our radiologists. I waited ALL DAY for radiology reads to come back so I could clear c-spines and dc people. I paged them multiple times, and they just couldn't get it to move faster. All I'd get is, "Well, there are a lot of traumas." I'm like, yeah, I know, I'm taking care of all of them and they want to go! It was SO painful waiting until 5PM to get final reads. What's even more rediculous is they read the newer patients first. So I can have a guy that came in a 10am on New Year's day and he gets his CT c-spine read before someone who came in at noon on New Year's eve. Make sense of that, will you? I think for a level 1 trauma center to have radiologists this slow is a crime. The head CT attending radiologist strolls in at 3 pm to do reads. Really? That just doesn't seem right to me.

Anyway, as painful as it was, we have made it through New Years. Of course we still have to make it through Sat night, which is notoriously busy, no matter the month. And sadly it probably gave all the New Year's eve drinkers a day of recovery so they can be back at it tonight.