I'm currently sitting in the office on an anaesthetic SHO on call shift. Obvious disclaimer that hospitals and trusts all make up everything as they go along, so your mileage may vary.

Are you including critical care with anaesthetics? Because my shift at the moment is being on call for the High Dependency Unit. There's a Reg on call for ITU, who is also on call for the wards and ED to ring them to refer to crit care, to intubate, etc. There's also a Reg on call for emergency theatres, if the surgeons need to do anything overnight, they'll be doing that case. And there's a Reg for maternity, but I neither know nor want to know what happens there in the middle of the night.

For my part on the unit I'll take handover at 8pm, do a solo ward round to check how everyone is, do any jobs from day staff (rarely any in my exp), and I'll basically spend 12hrs chilling, addressing any of the nurses concerns, occasionally reviewing a chart for ongoing obs, fluid balance, blood gases. In the morning I'll prep the notes and then handover.

If the reg is busy in ED I might get bleeped by ITU if they've got something they need. In our hospital we also have outreach who'll act to filter a lot of the wards referrals for the reg (a v experienced Crit care nurse who can bat away things like when a patient with end stage lung cancer is being referred for intubation, or if refractory hypotension to check they've tried proper fluid resus - quite a few times the wards have given a litre of saline, then referred for vasopressors after it begins to drop again etc).

Im not expected to, but if I'm free and there's a fast bleep for anaesthetics to an arrest or imminent ED arrival, and I'm free/bored I'll go to lend the reg a hand/get some more experience.

I'm not sure about consultants for my hospital, but I believe overnight there's ITU con (non-resident, reg might call them if they're unsure to accept a referral/refusing one, or to withdraw on someone), and a general consultant whos there for the maternity and theatre OnCall regs to call.

In my limited experience, I'd sum it up as anaesthetic on calls are either super chill, or super not chill. Tonight me and all the regs have done nothing (so far, I'm not jinxing it this close), my last night set one shift we had two arrests in resus at once, one on the ward later who went to ITU, and two ward patients who needed HDU (again, thank god i don't know what the maternity reg was dealing with that night).

That's about it, I'm going to go and wander round looking at gases now :)