Ward & ER rapid reference

It never starts with a diagnosis.

It starts with a sentence. Someone reads you a number, or describes something they don't like the look of, and you have about sixty seconds to decide whether to get up.

"Bed 12's systolic is 78, he says he feels fine."
"She hasn't opened her bowels in five days and now she's vomiting."
"Potassium's 6.4. The lab wants to know if you want a repeat."
"He's pulling at his lines. Can we give him something to sleep?"
"She had a small fall. She's back in bed, she seems okay."
"Family's here and they're asking to speak to a doctor now."

Four of those six are the ones that kill people, and they are not the four that sound urgent. Handbooks index by diagnosis, which is useless at the moment you actually need them — because at that moment you don't have a diagnosis. You have a sentence.

Eight of the calls are written out in full here, free to read.

The 3 A.M. Playbook

Twenty calls, indexed by what you were actually told. 29 pages, PDF, yours to keep. Edition 1.2.

The reference most of us reach for instead costs around €500 a year, assumes you already know what you're looking up, and needs a connection the ward doesn't have at three in the morning.

Buy the PDF €29 · instant download

Every call is laid out the same way

So that at three in the morning you are reading a shape you already know, not parsing a new page.

The phone scriptThe four questions to ask before you hang up, in order.
KillersWhat this presentation is hiding when it's hiding something.
First movesWhat to start before you have an answer.
Escalation thresholdThe line that means you wake someone senior, stated as a number or a finding, not a feeling.
A paste-ready AI promptWritten with its guard rails already in it, so the model argues the differential with you instead of agreeing with you.
A note stubBecause you will have to document this at six.

It also tells you when to close it

There is a card at the back listing the situations where you should not be consulting a tool at all — where the correct move is your hands, your eyes, and the crash call. A reference that doesn't say where it ends is not a reference, it's a liability.

What this is not

It is not a protocol, it does not replace your local guidelines, and it does not make a decision for you. It is written for licensed clinicians and clinicians in training. Verify everything against local protocol.

Twenty calls. 29 pages.

PDF, instant download, no account needed.

Buy the PDF €29 · one payment Launch price until 31 October, then €39