Sometimes I miss the night shift. I had a lot of fun during that time. I met my husband on my shift, he was the "rubber band bandit". He was one of the attending docs and went around rubber banding different things behind the nurses back. Laughter really made the shift go by quickly. I remember having water fights on many nights....
Get paid more to do less. If you really want to work during the day, please go right ahead my chum...........p!
To do LESS? You must not work in an ER. Less staff, less resources, but the same amount of patients. If you get paid a night diff and you work LESS, I'd never leave your current job.
I've got you beat, meanmaryjean! This year is 40 years since I started working nights. Except for 1 month when I tried day shift, I've never worked any other shift & I'll never go to any other shift until I retire in another 30-40 years.
Assuming the earliest age you could start working night shifts is at age 16, that would put your suggested retirement at 86-96 years old?
I'm just a first year nursing student who worked 3 months as a CNA before starting school but I hafta say.... night shift blew me away. The nurses were whip smart. One literally came in a got a resident who'd been consigned to death watch back on her feet (after working a full shift as an ER nurse at a hospital) and the other NAC and I worked the whole night as a team. The feeling of teamwork was the BEST of any (admittedly limited) experience I've had. It was an unconditionally positive experience, so much so that I picked up double shifts from my regularly scheduled evening shift just so I could hang with the night owls. I'm thinking that night shift might be the place for me.
I've always been a night owl, so working nights was easy for me. I never hit the "four am wall". I never nodded off during charting, never bleary-eyed during my shift.
Otherwise, I liked having fewer residents, attendings, management-types loitering at the desk ?
New to night shift here. Do state inspectors not come to the hospital at night? If so, that's enough of a reason by itself to work nights!
State inspectors have been known to come at 6 am or 6:30 am, but don't make a habit of it. One time they showed up around 6:30 am and I ran around making sure everything was done as quickly as possible. Oncoming shift was trying to prolong report but I made it short and sweet as the surveyors were down the hall. Just made it out of there!
Love night shift!! It caters to my introvert-ness and I always get time to do things BEFORE work. (Working out, etc) On day shift I felt like I missed EVERYTHING for those three days because I was just dead tired and had to be up at 530 am all over again. Not to mention everyone else in the real world was done for the day and headed to sleep already.
On nights I can get 6.5 hours of sleep and be good to go. As on days... I was getting more and still felt absolutely dead the next morning.
I love my night shift co-workers. So helpful and a lot of team work.
34 years on nights so far and have no intention of ever switching to days.
In fact my long range plan is to be that old woman in the geriatrics unit who WILL NOT sleep and spend the night sitting in the Geri chair by the nurses station - folding towels!
To do LESS? You must not work in an ER. Less staff, less resources, but the same amount of patients. If you get paid a night diff and you work LESS, I'd never leave your current job.
NOADLS
832 Posts
Get paid more to do less. If you really want to work during the day, please go right ahead my chum...........p!