[bhensley]

Originally Posted by love_being_an_aide

I'd like to know what hospital you work in, because you are one of the few this happens to. On my shift, we never have time to sit and eat "buffet style." I'm running around getting vitals for 30 patients, doing computer assessments and ADL's on each, then begging the lab to give me a few more mintues to enter in the patients diets and labs that are ordered, because I have call-lights going off all over the place. And our nurses are up with me doing the same thing. We work as a team to accomplish anything, and it's not easy. I am in total agreement that each shift has it's own set of issues it deals with, but don't go knocking the night-shift.

At the hospital I work at, we all bring things for us to share and eat when I work night shift because there is no where to buy lunch other than the vending machines! We set it up so that when we get a moment to run in to the breakroom, we can shove something in our mouths and keep on going. We don't get to lounge around and eat a meal; its just shove and run.

[suanna]

I know the feeling. Out new unit director just decided that night shift can do all the stat cart checks and glucometer checks since we don't have much else to do!!! Patients just love hearing the defib check just as they are going to sleep. It's like they think the patients just evaporate at 1859 and recondense at 0701. To make matters worse she worked nights of many years- but in the one area of the hospital that nights is quieter than days-PACU.

[unapt576]

I have to be honest here. In my 16 year career I've worked mostly day shift and 3-11 shift on a busy , chronically understaffed step-down unit. In the last 2 months I have been placed on night shift, and I am shocked at the difference in the pace. After the crazy hellishness of the previous shifts I find that the biggest problem I have on nights is staying awake after 4 am. Even the nights that my co-workers describe as "bad" are a walk in the park for me. I'm beginning to purge myself of the stresses and resentments that have built up over the last few years, and I'm :gasp: starting to have moments where I actually enjoy my job again.

Melanie