Everybody's working for the weekend

In a recent study.

This was the first time in a long time that I have had to work a weekend. Actually most of my former jobs have been with kids and camps and strangely enough they usually never involved working both Saturday and Sunday 8-4.4

My preceptor gave me plenty of warning about working the weekend. Like, a month I think so I was prepared mentally... people work the weekend all the time, I am not sure why I am making a big deal out of it.

Its really different than working during the week though. First of all there is just a lot less staff at the hospital so only really emergent test get done. So the patients are all in their rooms so that is awesome. The less staff also means easier access to the charts! Also my preceptor was covering 4 wards so we only had to see the high priority patients. 

I was also given a lot of responsibility this weekend. Which was a great learning experience. I was given patients and told to assess them and make decisions about there care and where they stood on the priority list and what they should receive as treatment. When you are left on your own you are forced to think things through critically and rationalize your actions because there is no preceptor to bail you out or correct a misstep. My preceptor didn't give me anything I couldn't handle in terms of patient complexity. But its always (for me at least) a bit unnerving stepping into a room collecting a social history, ausculatating or doing a balance or walking assessment and knowing that your findings are going to effect their treatment. I always worry that my assessments are wrong or invalid or I am finding something that is not there or missing something important. And without that piece of information am making sub-par decisions for their treatment. I sometimes wish my supervisor would follow me around to confirm everything. But in a way its good that she doesn't as this really makes me OWN my clinical findings and subsequent decisions.If she was checking up on every little thing I did I might feel like I was being micromanaged, I also might not become as confident in my clinical reasoning skills.