Marisol Reyes expected a prescription. The first forty minutes were about her rota, and she nearly walked out.

The apnoea pathway begins with a home study rather than a laboratory night, which cut the wait for a first result from months to under a fortnight.

After the course

Shift patterns cannot be treated around. Where the pattern is the cause, the conversation has to be about the pattern, and it is usually the least welcome conversation in the clinic.

We can’t out-prescribe a rotating shift pattern. It’s the least popular sentence in this clinic.

Dr. Helena Braddock, sleep medicine

Week two is the worst week

The diary runs for two weeks before anything is changed. Retrospective estimates of sleep are unreliable in both directions, and the diary is the correction.

“It felt like blame,” she says. “It was actually just the only lever that moved.”

Contributing writer

Dr. Helena Braddock

A demonstration byline created for this prototype. Not a real writer, and not a clinician.

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