10 minutes // ( #ADayInTheLifeOfABiomedicalScientist)

1. The phone rings, the emergency one.

"Hi, it's switchboard here. I've got OIR on the line," said the voice.

"Go ahead," I replied. "Put them through."

There was a click, the calmness of the operator replaced by chaos.

2. "Hi, it's overnight intensive recovery. Could I start a code red please? We have a patient post-op who's crashed. We've had to open them up on the ward."

19:25, the clock starts ticking. 10 minutes. From phone call to products at the bedside. Tick tock.

3. "Can I take the patient details?"

There's voices in the background, I can barely hear her. Rushing. Tick tock.

I was half way through a full crossmatch for one of the sickle patients for the morning. It had been a quiet evening so far. Damn it, did I say the cursed Q word?

4. 8 minutes to go. My haematology partner comes to help, she's been trying to call a GP with a low haemoglobin but it's late and no-ones around to take the call.

"Can you grab me the emergency FFP and 6 B Pos red cells please."

The bleep goes off. I don't have time to answer.

5. 7 minutes to go. I grab platelets and issue them out. The MLA tells me the analysers haven't been transmitting results for some time and the wokfile is growing. They're getting ready to go home. I make a mental note and add it to my list of things to deal with later.

6. Birth Centre bleep again. The porter arrives.

"I'm one of the midwives on the Birth Centre. I sent a sample, but it's been rejected. I took it myself. Can you tell me what's wrong?"

"I'll call you back, we're in the middle of a code red."

6 minutes to go.

7. The red cells and platelets are done. I'm printing the transfusion tags for the FFP, but the printer jams. This was the backup, the other printer's alignment is off and so is not in use. Ensue French mode being shouted mentally. I pop the hood and try to remove the jam.

8. My colleague is waiting to press the button. 4 tags are wrapped tightly around the roller at the mouth of the printer. The sharp cutter at the end for tearing labels tears through my gloves. Luckily my skin is intact. Lid down.

"OK, try again."

She clicks. 5 minutes to go.

9. I grab a box and throw in the units as she does the label / unit checks.

"Okay, these are going to OIR bed 6, please."

He nods. He knows what he's got to do. He's got 4 minutes to do it.

"Thanks for your help," I say.

10. My colleague goes back to haematology to get on with the films and the malaria that arrived. I call Birth Centre.

"So the patient's DOB was incorrect. You'd written the year as 2019. She's 35, not 5 months old. That's why it was cancelled."

"But I wrote it myself."

11. I still have the crossmatch to finish and the analyser transmission to deal with. The cardiac SHO calls as he does religiously every day to make sure blood blood is ready or ordered for the morning. He has a list. It's going to take some time.

Tick tock, it never stops.