Not sure there's an answer for this as all of my co-workers voice the same complaint. But how do you stay "on" for on-call without letting it consume your nerves? I love my job, the first time I can say that in nursing and I'll be here a year in June. I love my co-workers they are awesome. The only thing I don't like about my job is the on-call.
Right now I have the weekend which for us is Sat 8am to Mon 8am. There's a 12 hour nurse with me til 9p. We have an IPU that takes calls until 7am starting at 7pm and if there's an emergency I would need to go out. Because we are slow tonight, the 12 hour nurse has the phones, but quite often I would be triaging calls from 4p to 7p from answering service.
I had to go out earlier today with a foley not draining and it was no big deal. The pt was wearing briefs AND long pj bottoms so it was all twisted and an easy fix. But I guess I hate that unknown and not knowing what crisis it could be and other nurses voice the same.
We are blessed as we only have on call weekends approx every 6 weeks. However if you don't have a weekend that month you are generally scheduled for more overnights (for us that's 430pm to 8am) however we do have an evening nurse that works from 9p to 7am and for the most part we never go out after 9p as she catches it all for us. We do frequently have admissions though after work if we are on call or tuck ins, which can go until 10pm, so it's exhausting.
I just can't relax when I'm "on" I'm always on high alert, can't sleep etc... because you just never know I would rather have an assigned shift than this. I've gotten better for it not darkening my mood totally but I do find that I will sometimes be thinking about it the week before, dreading it's upcoming which is nuts because then I'm losing piece of mind on 2 weekends! Writing it out makes it sound nuts!
So how do you relax and just let what happens happen? I usually am v good about trusting God and his plan and any time I've been called out, it really does have his plan and purpose imprinted on the experience but I still don't like "not knowing" haha.