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Since I said I would...
May. 28th, 2005 03:52 amTales of overnight shift...
It's seriously nearly four in the morning and I'm wide awake. Could be left over adrenaline - after about three hours of nada, I got four pages one after the other. Coincidentally at the same time an ambulance arrived with a surprise.
Okay, explanations first. Night shift comprises of two aspects. The first is the State Coroner's Office. People don't die strictly during business hours, so all the normal work of taking reports (known in the office as 'killing people'), arranging the government undertaker and police reports, checking them in, taking care of any property and putting all the paperwork on the system, that happens. Plus the odd release, should a funeral director need someone for an early funeral.
The other part is the after-hours court. There's a pager, and basically police use it to request emergency intervention orders, search warrants and the like. We're the link between them and the on-call magistrate (who issues search warrants etc) and we issue the domestic violence orders ourselves. So when the Dread Beeper goes off, we have to call the person paging us, find out what they want and get them to fax it through - provided they've done all the filling in properly.
So, tonight's biggest excitement (so far) was the motor vehicle accident out in Coburg tonight. Two cars, six people involved, one fatality (thank goodness). Apparently there was a situation at the scene, so the ambulance officers brought the deceased straight here, without getting a doctor to certify him as dead along the way as the undertaker would have. So we had to figure out what the hell to do, and ended up calling in a locum.
Now, if that was all there was, I would have been fine. But work gangs up on you here, I've noticed, and the arrival of the ambulance set off the pager. Four times. So in between talking to the ambos and the mortuary technician (he who actually deals with the deceased), I was calling police stations and finding out what they were after and getting them to fax through their intervention orders and issuing them. Plus answering the phone, which had also decided to wake up.
This is all around two in the morning.
Oh, and another thing we do, which the phone just reminded me - we're the point of contact for police needing medical officers to determine competency for interview, conduct examinations of rape victims, and to take blood samples from drunk drivers.
So, yeah, busy half-hour or so for me there.
Death-wise it's been pretty quiet. One old man found dead of unknown natural causes in his bed, the car accident, a cancer patient who died at home and whose doctor is unavailable to issue a certificate. And a death at the Austin Hospital the doctors couldn't pin down an exact cause for.
It's not all work tho'. Earlier, while Sarah, my partner was still here, there was a chair ride (she ran me around the car park on an office chair - actually a lot of fun) office cricket with a ball of paper and a ruler, and taping me to my desk with sticky tape. Yes, I've found someone in the Department of Justice with a sense of humour. She's the one with the Furby obsession - work has its very own Furby, which we were entertaining ourselves playing with before and which I won't sit with my back too in case it comes to life and leaps at me with plastic fangs bared. ;)
*looks at the time* Two hours to go. Think I'll go grab my breakfast - I brought some microwave porridge that isn't half bad...
It's seriously nearly four in the morning and I'm wide awake. Could be left over adrenaline - after about three hours of nada, I got four pages one after the other. Coincidentally at the same time an ambulance arrived with a surprise.
Okay, explanations first. Night shift comprises of two aspects. The first is the State Coroner's Office. People don't die strictly during business hours, so all the normal work of taking reports (known in the office as 'killing people'), arranging the government undertaker and police reports, checking them in, taking care of any property and putting all the paperwork on the system, that happens. Plus the odd release, should a funeral director need someone for an early funeral.
The other part is the after-hours court. There's a pager, and basically police use it to request emergency intervention orders, search warrants and the like. We're the link between them and the on-call magistrate (who issues search warrants etc) and we issue the domestic violence orders ourselves. So when the Dread Beeper goes off, we have to call the person paging us, find out what they want and get them to fax it through - provided they've done all the filling in properly.
So, tonight's biggest excitement (so far) was the motor vehicle accident out in Coburg tonight. Two cars, six people involved, one fatality (thank goodness). Apparently there was a situation at the scene, so the ambulance officers brought the deceased straight here, without getting a doctor to certify him as dead along the way as the undertaker would have. So we had to figure out what the hell to do, and ended up calling in a locum.
Now, if that was all there was, I would have been fine. But work gangs up on you here, I've noticed, and the arrival of the ambulance set off the pager. Four times. So in between talking to the ambos and the mortuary technician (he who actually deals with the deceased), I was calling police stations and finding out what they were after and getting them to fax through their intervention orders and issuing them. Plus answering the phone, which had also decided to wake up.
This is all around two in the morning.
Oh, and another thing we do, which the phone just reminded me - we're the point of contact for police needing medical officers to determine competency for interview, conduct examinations of rape victims, and to take blood samples from drunk drivers.
So, yeah, busy half-hour or so for me there.
Death-wise it's been pretty quiet. One old man found dead of unknown natural causes in his bed, the car accident, a cancer patient who died at home and whose doctor is unavailable to issue a certificate. And a death at the Austin Hospital the doctors couldn't pin down an exact cause for.
It's not all work tho'. Earlier, while Sarah, my partner was still here, there was a chair ride (she ran me around the car park on an office chair - actually a lot of fun) office cricket with a ball of paper and a ruler, and taping me to my desk with sticky tape. Yes, I've found someone in the Department of Justice with a sense of humour. She's the one with the Furby obsession - work has its very own Furby, which we were entertaining ourselves playing with before and which I won't sit with my back too in case it comes to life and leaps at me with plastic fangs bared. ;)
*looks at the time* Two hours to go. Think I'll go grab my breakfast - I brought some microwave porridge that isn't half bad...
