Fifty Six Hours

In a large hospital in England

The 'on call' shift for a senior house officer is 48 hours plus
a normal day's work on the day following the shift of eight or nine hours.
The 48 hours are paid at half the normal rate.
During this time she is the only doctor taking care of patients and
admissions on five wards plus the trauma patients and admissions in
the casualty department.
On a normal on call shift she may get as much as four hours sleep in each 24 hours
and she may get none at all. On this 56 hour shift she slept for just two hours.
In one week she sometimes works 96 hours 'on call' and 37 normal hours
totalling 133 hours, 96 of which are paid at half rate.
During this whole week, from 8.00 am on Saturday until 8.00 am
on the following Saturday, she will have just three nights' sleep.

The photographs are a selection of 26 images spanning the 56 hours of the shift.
-------------------------------------
The photographs of Dr Rodica Mills show some obvious features of a doctor's shift
and some others which evoke some of the atmosphere of a hospital during the
middle of the night and the procedures which are undertaken by the doctor.

The photographs show:
the bustle of the daytime, the solitude and bleakness of
the hospital corridors at night.

The extensive walking to and fro.
The never-ending writing of drug charts and reports.
The speed of the doctors movement in her job.
The concentration.
Changing shifts (nurses, cleaners etc.)
Cold outside - warm wards.
Icons, such as uniforms, computers, syringes, drugs, machines
and such things as gifts to the ward.
Blank walls and clutter. Posters, information, beds and wheelchairs.
Things noticed in passing, glimpses into another world (the ward).

There is no wind-down to the shift and the doctor has to be as sharp on
Monday at one o'clock in the afternoon as she was at nine in the morning
on Saturday when she started. The hospital doesn't stop working.
It is remarkable that the doctor can retain her energy and acuteness
over such a long period.

The photographs are an attempt to change what we may call 'normal'
documentary imagery by using a panoramic format. This has connotations
of cinema and has the doctor in the role. It also lends itself to a more obvious
way of composing, (space, balance, direction and vector especially) and presents
a view more in keeping with the sweep of the eye, and the way we see things
naturally, i.e. panoramically.