Categories: uncategorized
Date: 19 July 2005 13:47:23
I did it - survived my first night shift. It was really, really quiet - we had about half the number of patients in comparision to last week. This meant it went quite slowly because there wasn't lots to do, but it also meant they let me out 3 hours early! So I was in bed by 5am, and forced myself to get up at 11am to see Duracell after her graduation (WELL DONE!!!!!).
It was rather strange - in recent months i have stayed up the whole night on a couple of occasions, but for completely different reasons. Once for an Easter vigil and then again for the Trade Justice vigil in London. When I mentioned to a staff nurse that I had done several all-nighters recently, she asked if this for was work or social life. I declared it was social life, because it was more social than work (a lot of time during both nights was spent sat round drinking tea and chatting). But really it was spiritual life. How many students, when they stay up the whole night, have prayerful meditations every 2 hours? It felt strange to be staying up the whole night and having the night split up by checking observations and writing notes, instead of prayers. There was also much less of a community spirit amoung the nurses - I spent a lot of the night reading either research papers or magazines that I found on the ward. Whereas on the previous vigils I spent the whole night chatting to fellow vigilers (noticably Sarah, Jo, Richard and Mike.) I suppose they must have done it all many times before, so were used to occupying themselves, if it was quiet, whereas the other vigils were one-off, exciting events.
Anyway, I'm going to go home and get some more sleep, as tonight I plan to work on my assignments and then sleep during the day tomorrow before working tomorrow night.