Drunks, psychos, and drunk psychos

I have been working nights recently, which is a joy; the old adage that half are fine and half are drunks or psychos is not that much of an exaggeration. There is of course relatively little to be done about this - the recent journalistic throwing-up-of-hands about it, while entirely correct, will not result in any action. That story from 2010 was written in similar form six years ago. Comparing the two plucked-from-air numbers suggests that alcohol is costing the health service an extra billion quid a year. Without digging through the numbers, my guess is rather than reflecting there being more boozers or their somehow contriving to piss on the floor in A&E in a more expensive way, the percentage cost they amount to is similar, and the burgeoning admin, management, and "consulting" fees spent on the NHS inflate the figure artificially.

Anyway, last night one of my patients was both drunk and psycho (NB: not a technical term), but was perfectly pleasant and to his credit made an honest if unsuccessful attempt not to urinate on the floor. In the end he got admitted to an observation ward overnight to sober up, and that necessitated handing him over to the morning team. I ran through the history, and mentioned that he had a mental illness "with some inappropriate behaviour - for instance, he commented on how handsome I was, and asked if I had a boyfriend - but he wasn't acutely psychotic."

Whip-smart, one of the day team piped up, "Well - I don't know...". I was smiling about it all the way home.