You know your shift is going to be INSANELY busy when...

When your manager calls you in to work on your day off at 2030 and you say it'll be an hour till you get there and the boss says "We'll take what we can get"......

When you're in the middle of a code and someone tells you that so and so fell out of bed and probably broke their hip and at the same time the phone rings and it's the family member of a confused pt calling to say that he walked home in the rain and slipped in front of his house and broke his shoulder(I kid you not, this all actually happened one night, we were very badly understaffed).

...there were 4 empty beds on the unit yesterday.

You come on shift and the DON tells you that you have 2 (bringing the census up to 33) new admits, the other noc shift CNA called off (only 2 noc shift CNA's), Mr. Doe needs a bath (he had been finger painting, and they just cleaned it up and hadn't gotten to him), and Mrs. Smith is expected to pass anytime w/in the next 24 hours... that was the longest shift of my life and one of only 3 times I felt like walking out and quiting. Mr. Doe didn't get a bath (I did wash him down with wet wipes, but simply put there was too much to do for 1 CNA), the 2 new admits where (luckily) independent, and Mrs. Smith didn't pass until 20 min. AFTER I left (bless her soul).

when you were dealing with an unstable patient all day and then you finally have to call a code at 645, then you end up staying until 9 to do all the paperwork! ugh....

you talk to your patient about updating his DNR status, and he chuckles as he writes to you "IF CPR FAILS, CALL IT QUITS" and you know then and there your days doesn't get any better than that!

You actually volunteer to work an extra shift because they are short on nurses (every extra shift I have ever worked has been crazy).
You are halfway through your shift and realize you forgot you had pt x because they were independent with ADL's (your other patients are total cares with dressing changes or just "pillow fluffers").
You get your assignment at start of shift and it includes a transfer from ICU, an ED admit and 3 isolation patients and a suicide watch (truly this really happened to me once!).
The offgoing shift says to you "You should have called in sick today."
You consider mass murder of all the attendings because they have conspired to all write stat orders on your patients at the same time.
All your patients have call-bell-itis and want the nurse for everything, including what a CNA can do for them.
All your pts are confused and high fall risk and constantly try to get out of bed, so your shift is spent trying to prevent falls.
Your incontinent C-Diff patient needs to be changed every 15 minutes, but the MD refuses to give an order for a FMS.
And finally, you show up for work only to find out that half the staff have called out sick and those remaining have to increase their patient load because they can't find other nurses to help us out. AARRGH!

... my DH says to me as I'm leaving, "I hope you have an easy shift." That's the ABSOLUTE kiss of death for any hope of a quiet night. Last time he said that to me I had my assignment changed FIVE times before midnight and ended up providing post mortem care for a baby who arrested just after our shift started.

You come in and ALL your patients just happen to be in the rooms closest to the nurse's station. For a reason.

I was running between 5 rooms where the bed alarms were going off constantly, the pts were ripping out IVs, crawling out of bed over the foot board, fingerpainting themselves with the contents of their colostomy bags, and one poor demented soul was memorably screaming "Moooommmmaaa! Mooommmma! MOMMA!" despite 5 mg of Haldol and 2mg of Ativan. I actually had a split second where I wanted to just throw mattresses down on a floor in an empty room and pile them all in there -- they weren't that sick, I swear to you it was NH dump day, and it didn't take but 5 seconds to see the nursing home had figured out that reporting a "seizure" meant 24 hours without the pt at their facility...as they all came from the same place and their presenting complaint was "seizure."

They screamed, threw things, climbed out of bed every 2 minutes, were constantly pulling off their gowns and tying their O2 cannulas into macrame, but NOBODY seized.

I thought about having one, however...

as you and your fellow RN's walk into the unit at start of shift, and all of night shift starts applauding.