How did nursing ever "buy into" 12-hr shifts???

[HazeK]

My unit has lost four nurses to other non-hospital jobs, so the nurses can be home in the evening with their young children.

How did we ever get to 12 hour shifts?

How do we get OUT of them???

I only see them benifiting the hospitals or young nurses w/o families who enjoy the extra days off.

12 hrs nearly kill off us 'over forty' nurses, in sheer physical exhaustion

(my first day off is spent w/ feet up and naps, recouperatiing...)

12 hrs means gone before children go to school and gone when they come home and go to bed.

12 hr shifts leave so many of us so tired and 'burned out' that it is difficult to care about the Profession of Nursing, like participation in our nursing organizations, getting quality CEUs, etc.

QUESTION: are 12 hr shifts helping or hurting the nursing profession?

Haze

[Allison S.]

I find that twelves can be more efficient.

I feel that I have better continuity in carrying out care plans. Working days, I can see almost the entirety of a pediatric day, and most of the spectrum of a child's activitites.

Also, a two thirds as much time is spent in report, and there is 1/3 less time spent orienting to patients (as only two nurses rather than three carry the patient in the course of a day.

In pediatrics, we are also more likely to see the family, if we are around longer in a day. Both day and night shifts tend to straddle the period during which the parents are there in the evening.

On a personal note, although 12-hour shifts are physically demanding, I spend less time each week commuting, and that is a real blessing around here.

Plus, I like the days off.

[rkymtnnurseygrl]

I love my 12 hour shifts, I've always thought if I have to be there 8-10 hours, I may as well take on a few more so I can have a life outside of working. Obviously from a management standpoint, two 12 hour shifts only require 2 nurses per patient rather than 3, so that would be their view. However, if they were smart and had retention on the mind, they may consider that each person has a different situation, and be willing to offer shift sharing or some other kind of shift offerings to make everyone happy. It's called flexibility, something that hospital management has yet to understand in many ways.

[karenelizabeth]

In one of the hospitals here there are two wards, both are mixed gen med

1. has traditional 8 hr days 10 hr nights permantly short staffed runs on agency nursed.

2. staff work hours days to suit. If you can only work 9.30 - 2.30 you do if you can onty do nights you d 12 hr ok twilight ok to as long as you work contracted hr, No probs, Staff self roster ward always fully staffed, hardly any sick leave, hardly used agency. waiting list to work there.

need I say more

Re 12 hr shifts the first christmas after some of us started them (only about 10 out of 60 staff to start with) we were sooooo short the senior nurse for an excercise rejig the rota as if we were all doing conventional shifts ang guess what it would have taken 3 extra bank/agency nurses to cover the shifts