Starting on hem/onc, I got a solid 2 weeks of days before I joined the ranks of the Night Crew for this weekend.
There are many important differences to know about nights vs days. In fact there are few similarities. On days you cover a smaller number of patients on your own service and you know them in great depth. On nights you cover your own service and 1-2 others and you're there mainly to keep things running smoothly, but you only really get to know the kids who have things going wrong.
As a result, nights has the distinction of sorting out those residents who have "white clouds" from those residents who have "black clouds". For my non-medical friends, let me explain... Your cloud is sort of your medical luck that follows you around... Black cloud people have to take care of lots of really sick kids and get lots of new admissions to their teams, and white cloud people get lucky with kids who don't get very sick and don't have as many kids to take care of.
They say that your cloud can become apparently very quickly, and I hope so because here is a summary of night #1:
Ok, it wasnt all napping and relaxing, there were some interesting complications and issues to deal with, but overall not bad! You have a small crew of doctors on, so you get to know people well, and during the downtime you get to relax and hang out and get to know people. We also get to know the nurses & staff better. Plus more downtime to hang out with my patients, which is why I'm doing this whole shindig in the first place. Now I just gotta make it through one more night shift tomorrow and then I actually get a day off!
((The downside to this year is I'm missing a lot of fun times with people who are important to me... Including Adam Cohen's birthday celebrations today & his real bday on Monday, so I made this picture below))
