I am currently on my last placement for the second year…delivery suite! It is where most high-risk women come to give birth and because of that it is very fast-paced! It has been quite difficult to adjust, but I thought it would be interesting to just talk about what a typical 12 hour shift on delivery suite is for me!
05:00 – This is when I wake up from my sleep and get ready for work.
06:00 – I catch the bus to the hospital and have a nap during the journey.
06:45 – I have a quick breakfast…today it is cereal!
07:20 – This is when my shift officially starts. My mentor and I receive information on who we are looking after today.
07:45 – The midwife and I introduce ourselves to the lady we are looking after today, she is having her labour started off early (induction of labour). As part of this, we place her on the monitor to check her baby’s heartbeat.
09:30 – I go for my morning break, so I have a cup of tea and biscuits.
10:00 – We take the lady off the monitor so that she can mobilise which will help with her labour.
10:30 – The midwife and I catch up on some paper work by documenting what the lady’s progress has been so far.
11:00 – As it isn’t as busy so far, I make use of the time working on my placement book!
12:30 – Our lady has come back and is starting to have some contractions. I check her blood pressure and pulse which the results are normal. The doctors on their rounds decided we should keep her on the monitor and reassess her in an hour to see how much she has progressed.
13:30 – The lady is having some stronger pains now so the midwife is going to assess her and see how she is progressing.
13:35 – The woman is progressing well, so the midwife decides to break her waters. However, the baby’s heart rate is starting to drop and it is not recovering well.
13:40 – The baby’s heart rate keeps dropping so we ring the emergency buzzer. The consultants and various midwives rush in and the decision is made for the women to have a Caesarean section as the baby is showing signs of distress. So the midwife and I rush to get changed into scrubs to help in theatre.
21:00 – It has been quite a traumatic day. The emergency Caesarean section really unsettled me as I felt like I didn’t know what to do. However, after this event I managed to bring two babies into the world, a little girl at 4PM and a little boy at 8PM. This just shows that you could be having a really horrible day but little (well big) events can make such a big difference. I hope I haven’t scared you about my very eventful day. Below is what I look like after a 12 hour shift…tired! Hope you enjoyed this post.
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