Ever since I became a mother, I’ve usually had Christmas off – but I work around New Year’s Eve, because we have to work on one of the two holidays in our ward. Anything else would also be unfair. In the past few years, I’ve always had an early shift on New Year’s Day. In concrete terms, this means: I get up at 4:50 a.m. – at a time when others are just starting their way home from their New Year’s Eve celebrations.
I do not mind that. I even get up a little earlier compared to early shifts on other days. Because you never know how well it will be cleared and gritted so early on January 1st, should the temperatures make it necessary. And so I’m definitely in the clinic in time for the start of the shift at six o’clock. But the few minutes here or there don’t matter.
On the ward itself, you hardly notice that it’s a new year. If we’re lucky, there’ll be some leftovers from the night shift coworkers’ treats. It’s a tradition with us: Both on the Christmas Eve shift and on the New Year’s night shift, everyone brings something to eat so that a small buffet can be prepared for the break.
Even from the clientele of our patients, one cannot usually conclude that it was just a few hours on New Year’s Eve. Every now and then someone is there to monitor for heavy drinking. But sometimes we don’t have such a case with us. And the number of intoxicated patients who come to us for monitoring during the Grafinger Volksfest cannot be surpassed anyway.
Intensive care specialist Pola Gülberg from the Ebersberger district clinic.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
The only difference to other days is that the shifts around Christmas and New Year’s are overstaffed. So there are initially more people planned for the New Year’s early shift than actually work in the end. Because if someone should be absent due to illness, it is almost impossible to find a replacement on these days. Overstaffing is therefore a personal buffer. On the other hand, if everything goes according to plan, one person can stay at home – our care management determines who this will be from the outset and pays great attention to a rotation principle, so that the same people do not always benefit in the worst case.
It hit me two years ago. At five o’clock in the morning my cell phone rang and it said that I didn’t have to come at all. So I snuggled back into bed – of course I don’t mind at such a time.
Pola Gülberg is an intensive care nurse. In this column, the 38-year-old talks about her work at the district clinic in Ebersberg every week. The collected texts are below sueddeutsche.de/thema/Auf Station to find.