Does your HN/NM cater to his/her dayshift?

[night owl]

Ours does and it's sickening!!! Whenever they complain, "There's too many treatments on our shift!" she has the Dr rewrite the orders for """@0600""". When they complain, "There's too many meds on our shift!" All of the QD or OD med orders were for 0900 (ie) MVT, Calcium, folic acid and in LTC, everyone's on those supplements! She had those orders changed to """"0600""" the nerve! When we try to fight it it's like pulling teeth and it takes months to change it back. What gives????

[tinkertoys]

In our LTC center, we have a schedule for med administration,so we know at a glance what time meds should be given for each room. In general, we try to give all AM meds at the same time, so as to disturb the pt as few times as possible with meds. If a med needs to be given before breakfast, 11-7 gives them. Otherwise, they're given at 8 or 9.If a pt objects to the early meds, or there is other justification (can't get them awake enough, etc.),we give only the ones necessary. Occasionally, someone will schedule all 47 QD meds for 6 am because they get a fingerstick. If that happens, we just change it back, and there's not usually a problem. We try to keep the nurse who prepares MARs for changover up to speed on things. It saves us all a lot of heacaches.

[thisnurse]

since we are required to swing shifts there really isnt much of a problem with day vs night shift. our hospital does cater to daylight but i dont have a problem with it. on nights there are few meds, no tests to send pts to, no meals, no therapies, no visitors, few docs, no baths (generally speaking), no routine vital signs, and no discharges, tho sometimes we get more admissions than daylight.

daylight has much more support than we do but they need it more than we do.

we have two main times to give maintanence meds...9 am and 9pm. we try to schedule things like vitamins then. i wouldnt wake someone up at 6 am for a vitamin either. med times are a nursing practice so if i have a pt with something ridiculous like that, i just change the time to 9am.

we dont throw things at each other. i change that time to 9am knowing that its an extra am med that i will end up giving at some point too.

[mattsmom81]

It's nice to work both shifts to see the problems of each...I always did a few day shifts (7a-7) each schedule to see how the other half lives. :)

I also WAY prefer nights. Most day nurses are considerate and DON't routinely retime meds and treatments to nights while they gossip and flirt, it's just the few that DO that get my goat. (and if you go in on days occasionally to 'spy' you can see them in action...hehe;) )

Since I was one of the night charge nurses, days teased me about coming in to 'spy'...but basically we all get along well...don't mean to sound too negative...as always its the few that get to us, isn't it?

I love MOST of the nurses I worked with through the years.... most nurses are good people.:)

[AIS52]

Heaven help the person who complains to our NM that nights does nothing! She was a night nursing supervisor for over 20 years and knows very well that nearly ALL admissions come on the 3-11 shift and that the patients don't sleep all night!

[adrienurse, LPN]

My only complaint about working nights is that I'm never able to get any "face time" with my pcm. She comes in at 0900 and leaves at 1700. Good for evening and day staff, bad for nights.

I've always thought that work assigned should be directly proportional to amount of professional staff present. Facter in of course the amount of patients awake and willing to have treatments done to them. Of course, we are supposed to be professionals, and should not allow things to get petty-- as long as everyone's being realistic about work that can be done.

Here's another equation:

staff who are unhappy + inability to control stressors to make them more bearable = abusing co-workers

This is why skilled, professional, down to earth managers are as good as gold.

[purplemania, BSN, RN]

When meds were scheduled for 0600 we had more med errors due to stress of finishing tasks before shift change. Ask Risk mgmt. if they can follow this to determine any trends. Do you have a quality control nurse or clinical liason or recruiter? It is counter productive to alienate a group of nurses when a shortage exists.

[Mama Val, ASN, RN]

Where we work our supervisor has told us, many times, "what you don't get done just leave it for the next shift". That is not always possible, but some nurses do it, sometimes on purpose and it ticks me off. We have a 3-4 hour area of no nursing staff between the day shift and nights at my facility, I work at a correctional facility. Some of us will stay after hours (without pay) just to finish up things we couldn't get done because we had to much to do during the AM. When the night shift comes in they hit the door running because they are already 3-4 hours backed up with things to do and are on a tight schedule as it is. Our Doc does schedule QDay meds but the reason is good, fewer visits to the nurse, and the schedules are split so the AM and PM nurses get an equal share. I have worked days and night and I do perfer night shift (no suits to look over your shoulder) but it is really unfair to push off your duties on your coworkers and your patients just because you don't want to do their job. If you don't want to do nursing....hey I here McDonalds is hiring, its a people place.:roll