Patients. Patience…

“Hi Mums and Dads. I’m the senior Paediatric Doctor in the emergency department tonight. As we are now switching over to night shift we are going down to two doctors and two nurses. I understand the waiting time is currently four hours, it is likely that this will become even longer over night. We will definitely get around to seeing your child but it might be a while. We apologise for the delay and please bare with us as we try to work as fast as we can.”

With that I walk back in to the packed emergency department in my bright pink scrubs feeling terrible. I usually love public speaking, give me a mic and a room full of people I’ll say whatever you want. But speaking in front of a waiting room full of tired, desperate parents, each clutching their unwell child – that’s the type of public speaking I could do without. On occasion when the paediatric section of emergency is full and the waiting room is overflowing I try to let parents know it could be a long night. I’d want to know if that was me waiting there. Usually at that point those parents who realise the problem probably isn’t that urgent and losing a night of sleep at home seems like a dream over losing a night of sleep in an overpacked waiting room with adult patients who smell like booze and vomiting, coughing, spluttering children. Other parents sit it out and wait until the early hours of the morning to be seen. The joys of being a parent. The joys of being a Paediatric Doctor.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my job. All the smiles and cuddles, giving advice and making children better makes up for it ten times over. I love it so much I decided to write a blog about it. Well that and the fact that I like writing but didn’t really know what else I could write about. I mean I could get all Carrie Bradshaw on you and talk about love and relationships but who am I kidding I fell in love with and married my first and only love so probably not the best person to get dating advice from. I love fashion too but I wouldn’t know the last thing about high end fashion, in fact I’d rather spend my money on clothes that look expensive than ones that actually are. And I spent most of my high school years in a fancy private school being teased for not knowing the expensive brands, so whatever, I’m over fashion. I also really love make up (yes a doctor who likes to wear make up – shocked?!) I momentarily thought of doing a make up blog for about a split second but let’s face it THE WORLD DOESN’T NEED ANOTHER MAKE UP BLOG.

So here I am. Writing about the one thing I’m actually passionate about to my very core. Children’s health and advising parents. The aim is to explore some of that through my experiences at work (and apologies in advance if this ends up being a selfish way to debrief some of the weird and wonderful things I see in my job) Either way, you’re welcome to join in and step inside my world for a while.

Dr. Nelu x