NICU

...stands for Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Am still slightly groggy from last night's on-call (my first ever as Neonatal SHO). It was (as first days always are) rather surreal. NICU is (stupidly) located in a different building from the maternity wards, which means that each time I get bleeped by labour ward I have to run across a courtyard and up 2 floors, by which time the baby is either already born, dried and swaddled (which happened 4 times last night) or is in dire condition with no paediatric doctor present (which fortunately has not happened-yet). Being Intensive Care, I didn't get a moment's rest in my 13 hours, as most of the babies were on some kind of ventilatory support and needed blood tests every 6 to 8 hours. At the end of the night, I had to write a summary on each baby, ready for the morning's ward round. And all that is just the routine stuff. Add to that the blood tests for jaundiced babies on phototherapy on the postnatal ward, antibiotics to be given (the midwives, who are trained to give IV antibiotics, won't do this, while I, who have never given them in my life, had to do them all), emergency calls to the labour ward, babies on the Special Care unit (a notch down from Intensive Care), and you are constantly running behind schedule. There are only 2 doctors covering all 4 wards, and I, as the junior (and arguably rather clueless) one am responsible for clearing all the boring stuff.

The nurses were kinder to me than I had anticipated. Charge Nurse (male version of Sister) for the night was an unbelievably camp, middle-aged chinese bloke. From what I hear he is much more laid back than the other Sisters - large, matronly African ladies who run a tight ship. He even ran a blood gas for me. As I made my 'blood round' armed with lancets, capillary tubes and microtainers, the (predominantly Filipino) nurses chattered away in Tagalog.