The Hours Your Calendar Didn’t Account For.
The hours your calendar didn’t account for. (You did.)
5:43 a.m. — the first call
It was the night nurse. Mr. Halloran fell at 5:38. Not hurt — not visibly — but on the floor, alert, embarrassed. By 5:51 I had the family on the phone, the on- call physician paged, and a note in my head for the morning standup. Today, the Tuesday I had planned, was no longer today. Today was now whatever Mr. Halloran’s fall turned it into.
6:47 a.m. — the standup
Two no-calls. A med tech and a 7-to-3 caregiver in memory care. The schedule rewrites itself before I’ve poured coffee. My staffing coordinator already has three names texted out. One says yes. We’re short one. We will be short one all day. I will cover the hall myself between 2 and 4. I will not put that on the calendar because if I put it on the calendar I will have to admit it’s a recurring meeting.
8:32 a.m. — the DON closed your door
My Director of Nursing has worked with me for six years. She does not close the door lightly. She brought a Kleenex from the front desk and put it on my desk before she sat down. She is the steadiest person in this building, and today she is the one who needs it. We sat for twelve minutes. I did not look at my phone. I will look at it after she leaves and there will be nine things. They can wait twelve minutes. Most things can.
The hours between the meetings
“The calendar is what the regional sees. The hallway is what the residents see. The gap between them is what I do.”
The two laps
At 2:47 I did my second walk of the day. I picked up six pieces of trash, fixed a crooked picture frame in the second-floor lounge, asked a caregiver how her son’s surgery went, and got three updates I would not have gotten in any meeting: a hospice case that was about to get harder, a maintenance request that had been open for nine days that I had never seen a ticket for, and the fact that the second-shift cook was thinking about quitting. Three things, none of them on the dashboard. All three of them mine to carry by 3 p.m.
4:51 p.m. — the meeting that wasn’t on the calendar
The 5 p.m. wasn’t a 5 p.m. It was a daughter who flew in from Denver because her mother’s decline this month wasn’t in any of the updates the family had been reading. She wasn’t angry. She was the worse thing — she was disappointed. I sat with her for forty minutes. I told her the truth. I told her what I knew, what I didn’t know, and what we were going to do about both. She didn’t hug me. She shook my hand. That was the right amount.
6:43 p.m. — the parking lot
I sat in my car for ninety seconds with the engine off before I drove home. Not crying. Not on the phone. Just sitting. This is the part of the day no one sees and no one asks about. It is also the part of the day that makes the next day possible. I have done this in every parking lot of every building I’ve ever run. I suspect every ED reading this has too.
9:34 p.m. — the final text
The night nurse texted All good. Two words. I let go of the day. I let go of Mr. Halloran. I let go of the daughter from Denver. I let go of the cook who is thinking about quitting and the maintenance ticket that was never opened and the DON who needed twelve minutes. I let go of the bird in the dining room, which is still funny, and the man in memory care, which is not.
If you ran a building this week, you ran a building this week. That’s the whole sentence.
Nobody scheduled today. I did. That is the job. The calendar is the thing the regional sees. The hallway is the thing the residents see. The gap between them is where I live, and the only reason this building runs is because someone — me, today, you on the day you read this — is willing to live there.
https://seniorcre.com/voices-from-the-floor/the-hours-your-calendar-didnt-account-for