Published
Hi,
I'm a CNA going to school to become a RN and I am considering a job offer to work weekend doubles as a CNA. I have never worked even a 12 hour shift job as a CNA and am not sure what the weekend double would be like. I'm wanting feedback from anyone who has worked weekend doubles. I'd just like to know what things are like and if it's very, very difficult for a CNA to do this.
rach_nc_03
372 Posts
Hi amy,
Not sure if you mean back-to-back 12 hour shifts, but i worked 2 12s (often turning into 2 14s) on saturday/sunday in nursing school, went to classes and clinicals full time mon-fri, worked a half-shift at the hospital one night during the week (depending on my class schedule) and drove 100 miles round-trip every day that i had to go to school. I did this for a little more than a year, during which time i also went through a divorce, moved out of my house into a tiny apartment to live alone for the first time ever, and had abdominal surgery twice.
it was hard. i was usually bone-tired, and thinking 'why me?' (though i knew the answer- needed insurance for the surgeries and $$ for the move!). but, at the end of the day/week/month, i had to do it, so i did. i think we have the ability to handle a *lot* more than we think we're capable of. I always looked at my fellow students who had kids and were working and going to school, and thought, 'wow, I could *never* do it if i had kids!' but they were thinking the same thing about some aspect of my situation.
i guess what i'm saying is that it can be done- it may not be fun (i missed out on a lot of my friends' lives during that year, and my dogs got fat from never being walked), but it can be done. Personally, i couldn't have kept up that pace if it weren't financially imperative- if it had been something i just did for extra cash, i would've quit. I needed the urgency to have the self-discipline.
One piece of advice, if you decide to do this: if you get sick, STAY HOME! Since you don't have any recovery time factored in to your week, an illness can hang on forever. I ended up with pneumonia because i stubbornly refused to stay home from work or school (which also had to do with the archaic school policy of allowing for no clinical absences, as if people don't get sick! pfft!). I ended up sick in bed for a week, which could've probably been avoided.
Another bit of advice- find rewards for yourself. I never got a chance to watch tv on a normal schedule, but i loved the show 24....so I recorded it on tivo every week, and chose (very carefully) a 40-minute period when i could watch it- no studying, no laundry-folding...just something pleasurable. Some days, knowing i was going to see 24 that night was the one thing that got me through it all. May sound silly to some, but it was important to me.
I wish you the best of luck- you can do this, and succeed, if you set your mind to it!!