Nursing hours

[elgibb]

Hi,

I'm starting nursing school soon and was wondering if all nurses have to work long hours? Or if there was any career paths that with nursing that don't work long hours? I won't mind the long hours at the begging of my nursing career but in the future would like to have kids and have a "9-5 type" job.

[twinmommy+2, ADN, BSN, MSN]

There are all sorts of shifts and hours that are available after you have experience under your belt. The experience is the key.

[RNperdiem, RN]

A lot of parents also use the long shifts to their advantage since the trade-off is four days at home. Many of us work a lot of nights and weekends, and with a little family help here and there, never pay for childcare.

With some experience, school nursing has the most regular hours. Clinic and procedural nursing too, though often you have to stay if things run late.

[Archerlpvn, LPN, LVN]

If you work private duty home health, some cases are 7-3, 8-4 and sometimes even shorter. In intermittent home health, you can work PRN with several agencies and build your own schedule. There's "school" nursing which typically runs the same hours that the school is open. If you worked as Quality assurance nurse, those hours are usually 8/9-5pm as well, I work doing visits, home health, from 7-10/11am then do QA nursing from that time until about 5pm, then do more visits until about 6/7pm. Nursing can be very flexible :)

[ruby_jane, BSN, RN]

You need to do some research on where you'd like to end up. And it's reasonable to expect at least a year of 12-hour shifts in an acute care setting. You'll need that experience to move on. You may even grow to like the freedom of three days on, four days off.

[caliotter3]

When you get ready to start looking for work, you can always communicate with an employer before you apply, to find out what the expected hours will be (if not specified on a job listing) and rank your order of preferences for jobs accordingly. For example, I have noticed that one home health employer in my area seems to only offer 12 hour shifts. Since I don't like to work 12 hour shifts without being paid the appropriate overtime, I avoid that employer.