Adjusting to Sleep schedule for Night Shifts

CCU BSN RN · Dec 23, 2016

Work your days in a row. Sleep in as late as you can the first day of your stretch, like 12pm if you can do it. Then stay up, work, come home, sleep, and go back. After the last shift, I stay up until like 4 or 5pm and then sleep overnight. Most of my co-workers will take a little nap after their last shift, like 2-4h, and then wake up before noon and have a full, productive day. Once I get to sleep after back to back shifts, there's definitely NOTHING that would get me out of bed after 2 hours.

I do end up losing productivity on days off with re-adjusting so I can hang out with people on a normal schedule. I looked into 24 hour places around me and decided which errands I can do at 2am when I am suddenly wide awake for no reason. 24h grocery store, pharmacy, Wal mart, and gym, for example.

If you can't sleep, try the following: Blackout shades, fan, melatonin, benedryl, alcohol, benzodiazepines. But maybe don't mix those last 4. One vice per night. Or day, as the case may be.

meanmaryjean, DNP, RN · Dec 30, 2016

Use the search feature in the upper right hand corner- metric tons of threads on this topic.

RN2b2018 · Dec 30, 2016

Oh yeah! New to the site and still learning to navigate. Thank you!!

SopranoKris, MSN, RN, NP · Dec 30, 2016

I second what CCU said. I've been working nights for 2 years now. If I have to work 2 or 3 shifts in a row, then I usually stay up as late as I can the night before and sleep as late as I can the day of my first shift. Once you're on the floor and the adrenaline is rushing, there's usually no time for feeling sleepy. I'm an ICU nurse, but I sometimes pick up shifts in the ER and I can tell you the ER is usually non-stop from 1900 to 0700. There's been the rare occasion where we had downtime, but they started sending nurses home.

When I'm done working my stretch of shifts, I usually stay awake when I get home until around 11 or noon, take a quick nap and then get back up at 3 or 4 so I can spend "normal" hours with my family. When I'm off, I usually sleep until about 11 AM so I can still have a somewhat normal day. I tend to stay up until about 2 or 3 AM and then go to bed. Luckily, my husband also works afternoons/nights, so we get to spend a good bit of time together. My kids are mostly grown, youngest is a senior in high school and rarely home with all his activities, so it works out well doing night shift. I could have never done this if he wasn't able to drive himself.

I love working nights. I did day shift for 3 months and while it was nice to be "normal" for a bit, I absolutely *hate* waking up at 0430 to get ready for work. I'm never tired early enough at night, too much of a night owl

There have been times where I've had to go do things the day I get off a stretch of 3 shifts in a row and I've been awake for more than 24 hours. That's incredibly exhausting, but it does happen, since other things in life are on a "normal" schedule. Thank goodness for 24 hour grocery stores. I get a lot of shopping done late at night when there are no lines

kiszi, RN · Dec 30, 2016

I have young kids at home so it works best for me to flip back to a normal schedule on my days off. My routine:

Wake at 7 or 8 am and nap from 2-4 the day before my first shift. Work, get home, quick bite, in bed ASAP, usually by 9am. In between shifts I do not make any plans. Come home, sleep, eat, hang out with family, back to work. Repeat.

After my last shift I still get in bed by 9am but try to get up earlier, say 2 or so, then go to bed around midnight with a little help from my friend Melatonin.

Thankfully my husband is around to get the kids off to school and such.