Many aspects of lockdown are similar to being on-call: travel is restricted to staying in your local area, and, apart from shopping for food or exercising (especially with the weather still feeling rather wintery), most people are largely house-bound.
That’s not to mention the fatigue and constant low-level anxiety – so trying to find things to occupy or distract myself with during those hours stuck inside has become very similar to when I’m on-call.
Video cleaned the bakery star
The obvious lockdown activity is to binge-watch the latest series or do a movie marathon. Likewise, it’s a good choice for on-call as you can pause and pick up where you left off if you have to dash off to an emergency.
A lot of people have been using the time to clear out the house (judging by the queue at my local tip recently), whereas some vets may opt to do the household chores that have piled up – especially as you don’t really mind being called away from scrubbing the house. For me, this tends to be a last resort.
Another popular choice during lockdown has been baking. As an infrequent baker, it’s something I enjoy, but rarely get the time, so I do tend to use my time on-call for this. However, it can be a bit risky; if I get called to a colic at a vital stage of the bake, I have to abandon the cake/brownie/biscuits, or leave them in the hands of my partner (often with explicit instructions) and hope for the best.
Currently, when I’m not on-call, I don’t have that problem, so have been able to do a lot more experimental bakes without the added anticipation of the phone ringing.
Fitness fail
Although the weather is slowly improving, a lot of areas have had snow in the past few weeks, making outdoor exercise slightly more challenging. While I enjoyed a couple of walks in the snow, it soon turned too icy and became more of a chore. Icy roads also put cycling off the cards.
Generally, when on-call, I would opt to run on the treadmill or cycle on the spin bike rather than head outside – again, for the ease of being able to just abandon ship and go rather than having to worry about running in small loops to stay close to the car. However, with gyms currently closed, this isn’t an option, and the weather isn’t helping with motivation.
Pure exhaustion
After an unrelenting week of daytime emergencies, missed lunches, and staying late to try and get everything done, the pure exhaustion is also similar to a busy string of nights on-call.
For months, I’ve been excusing the workload, desperately hoping it will calm down soon, trying to find an explanation for the correlation with COVID:
- staff shortages
- local practice closures due to isolation
- people spending more time at home with their pets
- clients having the spare cash to spend on vet fees because they haven’t been on holiday
- lameness becoming evident from all the extra walking everyone is doing
- lockdown puppies
…but surely there has to be a plateau, a saturation point? Yet we’ve been saying this for months and it just hasn’t stopped.
The end isn’t nigh
I don’t mind being on-call because, even if you have a horrendous weekend, Monday morning will come; you know you’ll get the next night or weekend off and you can look forward to that reprieve.
Yet, it’s the daytime work that’s the killer at the moment. It’s just not sustainable to work like this all the time – fire-fighting emergency after emergency, while still trying to provide a service for the less urgent cases that nonetheless need our help.
State of the nation
Different practices will be managing the workload differently, but from what I can gather, small animal practices in particular are feeling the strain and it seems to be a problem nationwide.
It’s very difficult to see a way out of this perpetual on-call-like state. While we may feel like we’re working fairly normally (having adopted car park consulting and PPE as the norm), the lockdown restrictions still affect the time we aren’t at work, and the “house arrest” element certainly feels like constantly being on-call.
Not being able to see family, drive to take a decent hike, or go out for a meal just to escape and recharge is certainly taking it’s toll. Every single day, you feel like you’re on-call, and collapse in a heap at the end of the day: eat, sleep, vet, repeat.
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