When you've worked on a busy ward for a few weeks you'll know that it's not always possible to have ideal days at work. You often have to make the choice between a full lunch break, or the chance of leaving on time. You end up working more as a fire-fighter than a doctor, moving from one problem to the next without time to stop and take stock. If you work within a surgical environment your working day is complicated by planned surgical admissions either from theatres, or Pre-admissions for the next day's work. Medical wards are slightly less predictable as you never know when the next patient will arrive via their GP or A&E.

But wherever you work, every now and then you get a lull, the calm before the storm. A day when, for whatever reason, the ward round is finished early, and the jobs all sorted leaving you time to stop and think. You know that this state will not last and you can use it in several ways. The first is to treat yourself to the lunch/coffee break you should have had the rest of the week. But then, once refuelled you have to think how best to prepare for the next storm front. In some situations time car used for catching up on the endless piles of discharge summaries and clinic letters. In others it may be you find a senior willing to offer you some teaching or assessments.

Such a situation happened to me recently. After the first hot lunch at work during the 6 months in the post, we opted to prepare the TTOs for all the potential weekend discharges and update the computer database to make the inevitable discharge summaries easier. Knowing which elective admissions were coming in we prepared as much of the clerking as we could from clinic letters and started drug cards and blood forms for them. But at the end of the day there is only so much work we can preempt. Later that evening when my colleagues had gone home and the next tidal wave hit I still found myself awash with jobs, but the preparation we had managed acted as my life raft and consequently I avoided the usual drowning feeling.

The calm before the storm is rare but can be a golden opportunity to catch up and build yourself the safety cushion ready for the next onslaught of work.