I'm not in Alabama anymore

At work, phone calls come in from various hospitals, and we respond on site depending on the status of the patient and whether or not their family wants to meet with us. In my old job, the first person on call would field all the phone calls, speak with the hospital, and decide whether or not it was necessary for them to drive in the middle of the night to a hospital. This meant that you got a lot of phone calls that kept you up all night, but there were quite a number of times that you told the hospital that you would send someone in the morning, they weren't an eligible candidate, or you would follow up with them later by phone. Going into the hospital was unnecessary and there's no sense in getting out of bed for nothing.

At my new job, there is one person every day who fields all the phone calls. But rather than dispatching themselves to these calls, they dispatch others. This is a nice little system because rather than being awakened 10 times in a night for something that you're just going to follow by phone, or someone that isn't a candidate, you're just awakened once or twice a night and in those cases, you're actually going to leave your house. It's nice most of the time. However, I'm starting to find the downside. Depending on who is fielding the phone calls for the night, you might be leaving your house for no reason. None at all. A person who isn't a candidate? "Could you just go over and look at the chart? The nurse did a really good job calling in the referral." Sure. I'll drive 45 minutes for no reason. Why not? "Could you do a chart review on this case? They're in the ER." Sure, I'll drive at 3 AM to a hospital to find a chart that literally has one page in it. One page. No age, medical history, circumstances of injury, nothing. One page with a neuro exam on it. I drove into the city for that this morning at 3 AM. I was at the hospital for 10 minutes. It doesn't take me that long to read a sentence.

At least I didn't have to fly anywhere. :)