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A typical shift

Twelve hours, usually 7 to 7. Handover first: the outgoing nurse tells you about your four to six patients. Then medications, vital signs, dressings, drips and charting, with call bells interrupting all of it. Doctors round mid morning and you tell them what has changed overnight. Someone gets worse and the plan for the day disappears. You eat standing up, or not at all. The last hour is charting what you did not have time to write down.