Cheating On Call Part 2

Better the Call Room Than the Courtroom

            Midwives: Once again, call time is not your personal time.  This select time frame belongs to the patients that may need your personal care and advice. Call time, temporarily, takes precedence over your family, young baby, toddler, partner, or your much-needed rest. I acknowledge that this responsibility is challenging.

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On Call and Nursing Infants

A majority of maternal on-call care providers are women; midwives, physicians, nurse practitioners, and others. . . It is an unfortunate reality that providers who are mothers will experience emotional and practical difficulty ,on call, to a greater extent than their male counterparts. There is nothing quite as lonely and uncomfortable as pumping breast milk in a freezing cold hospital call room at three o’clock in the morning. Professional women are, understandably, torn between their duty to patients and family, and, especially, their need to be available to their nursing infants.  In the old days, one needed to sequester for collecting breast milk, as it required privacy and a reluctance to reveal oneself while performing the task.

Moo.

This may be considered small comfort , but breast pumps have evolved and the process can now be accomplished discretely, under clothing, while you interact with co-workers, make rounds, or even deliver a baby. I am not suggesting that it is no longer hard to be away from a nursing infant, but collecting milk might, currently, be more civilized and less isolating. I understand that it’s still inconvenient, away from home, and I’m learning that modern human milking equipment has improved the process, somewhat. However, with call room pumping, I doubt there is much of anything that will prevent one from identifying with a mother dairy cow whose calf has been taken away from her.

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Prepare To Be Present On Call

Although an unpopular proposition, I must continue to emphasize the need for midwives to be present for patients when taking call. From an altruistic and medical-legal standpoint, I encourage women providers taking call to consistently set up shop in the hospital call room rather than trying to stay home with the partner and kids. I understand the dilemma. You’re torn and exhausted and any family time is precious.  But having spent my share of call-room dwelling, and participating in negligence lawsuits stemming from absent on call clinicians, I guarantee that persevering, and taking your on call hours at the hospital, is overwhelmingly preferable. At the very least, be willing to get out of bed and come in to, personally, evaluate your triage patients in person.

Consequences of Patient Harm

Living with the knowledge that your personal quality-of-life concerns, and negligent patient care decisions, have unintentionally resulted in harm to a mother and baby will negatively affect you for a very long time, perhaps forever. I assure you that the random, lonely nights on call, at the hospital, will significantly decrease your chances of facing negligence claims and their consequences. Trying times fulfilling your duties on call will, someday, dissipate from your memory. A bad decision on call, inadvertently causing injury and/or death to a mother or baby, will not.

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