When I work in hospitals, I’m almost always “on call.” This means I carry a pager that can go off at any moment, signaling an emergency of some kind:
Maybe a patient’s heart has stopped,
and the medical team need someone
to tend to a concerned family
while they attempt to save the patient’s life.
Maybe someone has died,
and the staff are not fully equipped
to sit with the grieving family
and walk them through the next steps.
Maybe someone on an upper floor of the hospital
just needs someone to talk to
in the early morning hours
when friends and family feel far away.
Regardless, when that pager goes off, everything else has to stop.
Like all hospital staff, I’ve developed my own superstitions around this. You may have heard legends of surgeons who wear the same bandana every day or follow the exact same pre-procedure routine. I know ER staff who refuse to say the words “calm” or “quiet” for fear of jinxing a peaceful moment. You’ve probably noticed how most hospitals don’t have a 13th floor. And then there’s the most famous hospital superstition: even though there is no documented evidence of an uptick in births and accidents and hospital admissions during the full moon, every hospital employee I know remains convinced. While we know these little rituals and taboos probably have no bearing on people’s health, we also don’t dare chance it.
My hospital superstition?
I am terrified of taking off my shoes.
I’ll often sit there in the on-call room (the small 1-bed 1-bath studio reserved for the overnight chaplain), thinking to myself, “Surely, no one will need to talk to me for a few hours. I can stretch out for a while and get some sleep,” but when I go to untie my shoes —the light brown dress shoes Jessi bought for me midway through my training—, something in me tenses up. This small sign of complacency (taking off my shoes) will surely signal an emergency, and I’ll find myself fumbling with the laces as I rush out the door. It’s happened before, and when it comes to superstitions, even one occurrence is usually enough to cement something in our minds as irrefutable fact.
The second I pop off those shoes,
something somewhere will go wrong.
I just know it.
There have been plenty of nights where I’ve even slept with my shoes on. Obviously, nothing happened on those nights as a result. I woke up to find the pager had stayed silent as my feet had stayed sheathed.
Of course, all of these superstitions point toward one common trend: vigilance. You have to be ready for anything in the high-stress environment of the hospital because, in this setting, everything can change in an instant.
A patient’s blood pressure can unexpectedly nosedive.
A massive accident on the interstate can flood the trauma ward.
A visiting family member can take ill and faint.
You never know what might happen, so I keep my shoes on and stay ready.
Of course, once my shift is over, there’s nothing more satisfying than going home and removing those shoes.
What superstitions do you carry with you? Have you developed any little rituals (like the shoes) to help you stay alert in stressful settings? Our superstitions reveal a lot about our understandings of the world; what might yours say about you?