The Full Moon Is Not a Real Thing (We Still Check)

There’s no data behind it. I want to say that clearly before I tell you about it, because I’ve read the studies, or at least the summaries of the studies, and the honest answer is that a busy ER on a full moon is statistically about as busy as a normal ER on a normal Tuesday. It is a myth. Everybody who works nights knows it’s a myth. We check the moon calendar anyway.

It’s taped inside the supply closet door, laminated, twelve months of phases printed off some astronomy site years ago by somebody nobody remembers anymore, and it has survived at least two supply closet reorganizations that should have thrown it out. Somebody glances at it at the start of most shifts. If it’s a full moon, or close to one, you’ll hear it mentioned within the first hour, usually as a joke, usually followed by somebody knocking on the nearest wood surface, which in a hospital is mostly laminate countertop pretending to be wood, so the ritual is a little compromised from the start.

Marcus, who you’ve heard about already if you read this blog regularly, is the worst offender. He’ll check the calendar before he checks his own assignment. If it’s a full moon he gets this look, resigned and a little thrilled at the same time, like a kid before a thunderstorm, and he’ll say the same line every time, something’s coming, and half the department will groan and the other half will nod like he’s said something profound.

Here’s the thing though. I’ve kept my own informal count for about a year now, jotted in the same notebook where I track what I’m reading, and my data says nothing, no correlation, full moon nights are indistinguishable from any other night by volume or acuity. I’ve shown Marcus the notebook. He looked at it for about ten seconds and said, respectfully, that my sample size doesn’t account for something he called moon adjacent effects, which is not a real term, and then went back to checking the calendar the next shift like the conversation never happened.

I think that’s actually the whole point of it. It’s not really about the moon. It’s about having one shared, low stakes thing the whole crew can groan about together at the start of a twelve hour stretch, something that doesn’t require anybody to be right or wrong, just present for the bit. We’ve got a dozen little rituals like that scattered around the unit and most of them don’t survive being explained out loud. This one’s survived years of explaining. Make of that what you will.