How I Survive a 32 Hour Hospital Shift as a Doctor

I don’t even know how this is possible or even legal, but I just finished a 32 hour hospital shift. As a doctor.

This was an on-call shift that ran from a weekend into a weekday. I arrived at the hospital at 8am on a Sunday and left the following Monday at 4:30pm.

During on-call shifts, sleep is technically allowed, but never guaranteed. If the ward is quiet, there may be short windows to rest. If it isn’t, sleep simply doesn’t happen. Even when you do lie down, you’re still “on duty”; your phone can ring at any moment, and you’re expected to be awake and functional immediately.

Long shifts like this exist largely because of staffing limitations, continuity of patient care, and how medical training is structured. Fewer handovers can reduce errors, and trainees are often required to cover extended periods to gain experience.

I genuinely hope none of you reading ever have experience hours like these. But if you are curious about what a 32 hour hospital shift actually looks like, then come along on the journey with me today.

How I Survive a 32 Hour Hospital Shift

8:00-9:30 am

The first thing I do everyday when I sit down at the station is to go through the entire ward of patients within my care/ responsibility, and see if there are any that require extra attention or if anything happened during the last shift. This will usually take around an hour or two depending on the day.

9:30-10:00 am

After I go through my list of patients and deal with some miscellaneous orders, I will go and put my work bag and my on call bag into the duty room. I’m low key a germaphobe, so I will remove all the beddings and get new ones. Even then, I always have trouble feeling comfortable in these rooms.

This is why I also have a designated on call bag with everything I need to make my shift just a little more comfortable.

10:00-11:00 am

I was getting pretty hungry so I ordered McDonald’s for brunch, no shame. Delivery services are my best friend whenever I am on duty.

11:00 am- 5:00 pm

Admitted four new patients.

Honestly 4 patients in a day is not bad at all, especially for a Sunday. On a typical Sunday call, each doctor is usually responsible for 10-15 new admissions, so I definitely felt like I got lucky that day.

For each new admission, we have to place the general admission orders (labs, tests, imaging, etc.), type up their admission notes and summaries, and make sure all the surgical consent forms are properly prepared.

By 4 pm, I was getting pretty hungry, so I ordered a drink: milk tea with black sesame and almond pudding. I continued to work on my admissions while sipping on my drink. I love having little treats to get me through my shift.

5:00 pm-8:00 pm

If the ward is quiet, this is usually the time many of the nurses go in for a quick dinner. Thankfully it was pretty peaceful this evening, so I had a few good hours of personal time, which I used to catch up on some computer work and take care of some personal tasks.

I also ordered my own dinner around this time- a vegetarian hotpot. It was really cold today, and it’s also always freezing at the hospital, so hotpot is one of my go to dinners when I’m on call.

9:00 pm- 11:30 pm

The rest of the night was spent dealing with more miscellaneous patient complaints and placing orders as needed. Thankfully nothing major or urgent came up, just the usual small things that need to be addressed.

12:00 am- 6:30 am

Once everything was settled, I went in to do my skincare, brushed my teeth, and prayed that I wouldn’t get called during the night. And it worked today! It was indeed a very peaceful night, I managed to sleep through the entire night without getting called, which is honestly very rare.

I’m always grateful for a quiet evening.

6:30 am- 8:00 am

On a peaceful night like this, I’ll usually wake up around 6:30 am, put my duty bag back into my locker, and go through some orders.

Most of the time, if something isn’t urgent, the nurses will write the orders on a post it note so they can be addressed in the morning. Orders like discontinuing normal saline, removing an NG tube, or taking out a foley catheter.

8:30 am- 16:30 pm

My on-call shift technically ends at 8:00 am, and by then you return to your original team and work until 11:30 am before you get the rest of the day off. However on this particular day, I had to continue working due to staffing shortages.

This month, I’m on the orthopedics team, so I continued my day in the orthopedic operating room.

By the time I finally left the hospital at 4:30 pm, I had been there for a little over 32 hours straight. At that point, I was running purely on muscle memory. I went home, took a long shower, and did absolutely nothing for the rest of the day, as I mentally prepared myself for another 12 hour shift the next day.

I’m not sharing this to complain or to glorify long hours. I’m sharing partly to document my own medical journey (my first ever 32 hour hospital shift!) and partly to share with those of you who are curious to what an unfiltered life of a doctor looks like.

This shift, although long, definitely wasn’t the worst one. Let me know if you’d like me to share more of these.

Until next time,

Emily