My life has become my book!11/30/2024 Remember how three years ago I wrote that book about a locums FP/Ob doctor who traveled to a snowy practice at a rural hospital near the End Of The Earth? How the job involved filling in coverage gaps to relieve the local doctors? That's literally my life right now! When I initially wrote the book, I never imagined that three years later I'd be working as a locums doc myself, traveling to a remote, rural locations where I deliver babies, care for hospitalized patients, take A LOT of call, and treat patients in the clinic! But it's true. Here I sit, in the hospital's rental apartment which is situated above the only furniture store in this town of 6,000. There's snow and ice on the ground and the temperatures are hovering around 5F (-15C). I'm waiting for the nurses to call me with the next laboring patient to arrive at the hospital!
To finish my own transformation into Dr. Alaska, all I need now is a team of sled dogs! The story behind this particular cold, northern assignment is this: There were 2 Ob/Gyns, an FP/Ob, and a midwife working at this hospital. 1 Ob/Gyn retired last year and the other one quit last summer. So it's just been the FP/Ob and midwife holding down the fort at a facility that's delivering on average a baby every 1.5 days! That's a lot of babies for just two people. It's the only hospital for over an hour in all directions, so it needs to stay open for the safety of the people who live here. I understand this situation. Once upon a time, I too was the lone FP/Ob doc on call for months at a time. Sure the work is rewarding, but relentless 24/7 coverage for months at a time is draining. Locums docs saved my sanity multiple times back in those days. It's been rewarding to pay it forward by providing some much-needed relief and respite to the Ob providers here. In full disclosure, yes I still enjoy delivering babies, but my bones are definitely getting older. Not going to lie, a frigid drive at 3am from my warm bed to the hospital hits differently now than it did 10 or 15 years ago! Isn't it wild how my life is imitating my book in this weirdly specific way? I always think that reality is stranger than fiction, but in my case, fiction has become reality! Leave a Reply. |
Jillian DavidAuthor, daydreamer, and practitioner of trying very hard to duct tape folks together and help when I can. Archives
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