Oh My God, You Fucking Idiots.

Neurology has three different subspecialties: stroke, general, and some other name that's been blasted out of my head by the Dalwhinnie.

If you call the Neurology rotating pager, your chances are good (ten out of ten) that you'll end up with a resident not on your patient's particular service, and with no clue what to do with that patient.

If you have a patient go bad at 1830, it's a sure bet that it's a Neurology patient.

So that's what happened to me the other night. And it's why I'm typing with one eye squinched shut and a half-empty (make that 3/4 empty) bottle of Scotch next to me.

Okay, not really. But still. It should not take me nine pages to find a resident willing to write the orders I need, and that resident willing only because I wrapped my bony paws around his scrawny neck. And squeezed.

WHY can you not have rotating residents on-call for more than a week? WHY must you keep the on-call pager a Deep National Secret? WHY on earth can you not brief the resident on call on the patients she or he is likely to encounter after 5 pip emma?

It's like the Neuro guys think they're Dermatology. Or that they actually get to sleep, post-call. In any event, the usual way of doing things brought me closer to actual physical violence, as in strangling the resident who decided to be a dick about things, than I've been in better than half a decade.

The best thing about moving to the CC unit? Is that neuro patients rarely get admitted to the intensive care service. And, if they do, it's the intensivist caring for them; not some jerk from the stroke service who knows nothing about myesthenia gravis.