These night shifts are going to be primarily STAT/emergency consults within the internal medical service (i.e. subspecialties of internal medicine such as gastroenterology, nephrology, infectious disease etc.), along with STAT neurology consults. It's just one person for all of these consults overnight. Sometimes things get very busy for this reason; other times they're quite calm. I like the night shifts because they do tend to be less busy than day shifts, and also involve less of the nonsense pages from nurses (which are usually complaints that "the resident isn't answering their pager" or "I can't reach this person" or "this patient has to be transported"). This is not what the consult pager is meant to be used for but it's become engrained in the culture... sometimes we are indeed the only person who can help. I typically do help out, and so do my fellow residents who are in the same position. Patients first, after all.
