12-Hour Tuesdays

Today was Tuesday. An 8-hour Tuesday. Quiet for the first time in a while. They'd kick me for saying that at work. You don't say the "Q"word at work. But now that I'm home it's fine. I work in a Psych unit. If it's a busy day, it just stays busy all day. But if it's mellow and all the patients are calm and all the charting's done and we don't have 5 admits and 3 discharges all at once, and someone says "It's a quiet day, isn't it?..." Then immediately the phone starts ringing and the manager has 6 things that must be done now and some previously placated patient gets upset by some insignificant thing that results in a "code green" and someone ends up in restraints. Usually (not always, but usually) 8-hour Tuesdays are decent. But every other week I work a 12-hour shift from 0700-1930 and those seem to be the days from hell. I can handle one admit at a time, even if they happen in quick succession, but I can't do three at once, plus a discharge and a patient in tears. I work with a great team of people and we work together well to try to take care of all the patients, but we have groups to run and charting and treatment plans and evals and then you throw in the unexpected outbursts from adolecsents and people in pain and phone calls from family members who mean well, but start telling you all about their problems instead of addressing the patient's needs and things can get a little ....crazy. Those are my 12-hour Tuesdays.