OB, so I'm just going to get handover and then we'll go around

to see patients and see if there is anybody in active labour. The first two are L&D

um, the first one gave birth yesterday at, well, today actually

at three am. I may not sleep for the next 24 hours. Sometimes I get a little bit of a

nap in the afternoon if it's quiet.

So Sunnybrook has been really really nice and they

let me take on extra calls, so I do a shift a month

so I just fly in to

help out and the women's residents are really happy about that because

not a lot of people are actually interested in obstetrics.

It's pretty awesome. The first part of our day on call is we round

on the patients that are on the floor. She's the one

that was admitted with pre-term labour. Right, she's 28 weeks.

A couple patients aren't actually admitted under us, they are admitted under the high-risk

obstetrical group, but we still want to keep that continuity of care and we want people

to feel like we are actually taking care of them and actively involved with them,

regardless if they are under our service or not, so we went and we offered just some supportive care to see how

they are doing. As long as your baby is there you can be there too.

Having the senior medical students with you allows you to

give them some teaching and then they can

help you out too, so if it's a busy day on call they can do some of the consults

Ya, that's why I go for bi-weekly manicures. Nice!

Pretty much the most important thing you are looking for in the second baby check

are things that change, so if there was a previously closed pallette, that's not going to change.

So between 5 and 7 we see clinic patients, but otherwise

I can finish up any stuff I have in my clinic downstairs, I can do some

work on my academic project or just have a nap.

If it's not busy in the afternoon, I tend to get a nap because overnight

is typically when we see a lot of the volume, but it may be a quiet day

and you should never say the Q word on the ward so I've just screwed us over now

and we'll be crazy busy.

On the labour and delivery floor, there is never really a typical day, so we can go from having

absolutely no patients to being completely swamped and having 5 people in labour

at the same time. But typically, around 5 o'clock we'll have a

clinic and then

we see what happens from there.

So I'm just finishing

my 24-hour shift for family practice OB,

and it was quite unusual the 24-hour shift because I actually had no deliveries

or patients in labour. I only had one call into triage and that was actually

at 3 in the afternoon.

To prepare for a 24-hour shift, the best thing you can do is get a good night's sleep the day before.

Sometimes it's difficult to do that, but that will be the thing that keeps you going.

You find the little things that keep you awake and energized.

Adrenaline is the big things that does it, but then there are things like

green tea, cupcakes, coffee. I like to bring my

own big fluffy blanket because I find it gets really cold at night

and it's a little piece of home too, because when you sleep away from home, it can be a bit uncomfortable.

I love delivering, it's so much fun. It can be

really quiet or it can be crazy and you want to pull your hair out and that's part of the appeal

for me, and usually a happy time for people so you're helping them

through that which is great.