Top 10: Lessons learned when on-call

1) Why stand when you can sit?
2) Why sit when you can lay down?
3) Keep hydrated.
4) Don't forget to eat.
5) Never turn your back on a woman in labor who has already had babies.
6) Try not to have patients who all have babies in the same night.
7) The OR doesn't like 4 emergency OB/GYN surgeries scheduled for the same night.
8) Offer a laboring woman either one finger or your forearm to hold onto...never your hand!
9) The lounge in the hospitals' OR is the nicest.
10) Running your butt off for 21 of a 24 hour shift makes you feel 'stoned'.

Totals for my latest call shift:
-5 vaginal deliveries
-1 C-section for breech baby
-1 emergency C-section for ruptured uterus
-1 post partum hemorrhage (with resulting emergency operation)
-1 miscarriage with severe hemorrhage (with resulting emergency operation)
-1 admitted for hyperemesis gravidarum (SEVERE case of morning sickness)