Monday, September 24, 2012  Up the Wall  I'm now 2-3 weeks into
my regular schedule at work, which consists of two 12-hour days
and one 7-hour day where I am both the ICU and emergency doctor,
AND see appointments (sometimes I only have 3 or 4 appointments,
which is awesome because then the hospitalized patients actually
get some attention, but sometimes I have 14 appointments,
several emergencies, and hospitalized patients that need
diagnostics and treatment plan changes during the day, and that
is not an environment conducive to good patient care), and
Saturday, where I work 6 hours and ONLY see appointments.  I
think emergency and ICU work is orders of magnitude more
interesting than annual checkup appointments and vaccines, but I
have to say that it is REALLY nice to hear the receptionist page
a triage nurse to emergency on Saturdays and know that I'm not
going to have to deal with it.  Anyway, Saturdays have a
generally calmer atmosphere overall, due to the fact that 1)
most appointments are annuals or p