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20.51 The profession that never sleeps

More than 12 hours after I got here, I’m set for home.

An action packed day and I wasn’t even on-call: minor ops, morning surgery, a home visit, an annual accountants meeting, afternoon surgery, emergency extras, extended hours evening surgery, 18 path reports to file, 37 scanned documents to view and 30 ‘tasks’ actioned (referrals, script reviews, phone calls, sick notes).

Times that all by twelve, throw in the four nurses’ lists, a couple of nurse practitioner surgeries, and the immense amount of work all this generates for our admin staff, and you get a flavour of my 12 hours in general practice today.

We’ve handed over to the local out-of-hours team to see us through til morning. 24 hours in GP, a profession that never sleeps and barely rests. And I thought we were all supposed to be on the golf course?