its my first weekend in charge at work and loads of people are emailing me to say they are off sick <sob>

[nailpolish]

im going to balls it up and my manager will think im incompetent

How many wards do you have to cover and how is the work split between the 20?

admission ward - 2 people, when they finish they go to surg or med, whichever is busiest

5 med wards - 3 people

5 surgical wds - 4 pple

2 renal wds - 2 ppl

cardio - 2 ppl

childrens wd - 2 pple

4 ortho wds - 2 pple

3 other wds - neuro/haemo/hdu - 3 ppl

with all that we are usually finished by 1015 so the bloods get to the lab easily by 1030

the lab staff are ruthless and wont take any after 1030

Have you managed to cover it?

Nailpolish, If you are really stuck have you considered asking the nursing staff very nicely as well as the docs? In most specialist areas the nurses do do venepuncture,and if asked nicely may be amenable despite having 101 other things to do We do tend to try and keep our vampiric skills a secret though,as it gets added onto a long list of jobs