Need input from NIGHT SHIFT nurses

Ruby Vee, BSN · Jul 6, 2012

our manager shows up every morning at 6am -- if you're working night shift and you need to talk to her, you know when she'll be there. she also makes a point to walk through the unit and offer kudos to anyone who deserves them. she makes a point to know who aced a class or passed acls or got a letter from a family, and when she comes in at 6am, she comes to tell us in person. when our manager orders food for an occasion, she orders some for the day shift and an equal amount delivered on the night shift. whoo hoo !! unfortunately, our manager isn't always in charge of the ordering of treats for the nurses.

sometimes when families bring food, some will get set aside for night shift; sometimes not. hospital management made a really big deal about meals being provided for both shifts during nurse's week. they delivered sandwiches at 6 pm, the day shift ate them all and when we came in there was nothing but crumbs. it would have been so much nicer had they brought out a tray of sandwiches at 10 pm for us.

i'll echo the complaints about the cafeteria. ours closes at 7pm. we have "food court" offerings like subway and mcdonald's until midnight, but you get sick of subway and mcdonalds real quick. the salad shop and the deli sandwich counter both close in early afternoon. breakfast starts about 6:30 am -- not very night shift friendly. meetings are 8am -- too long to stay when you're finished at 7 am, and very difficult to get up and come in for an 8am meeting on your day off. i'd love evening meetings. my previous job held all meetings at 1500-1900. it was an equally inconvenient time for both shifts, but both shifts were equally inconvenienced.

mama_d, BSN, RN · Jul 6, 2012

Night shift friendly thing my unit has done..

It used to be that nights was solely responsible for the weekly or semi-weekly stuff..wound measurements and photography & central line dressing changs & port re-accessing. After literally years of crusading, it's now split up...we alternate off. Days stills complains about it. And only a couple of them will actually change outdated IV sites, but that's a couple more than it was a year ago, so at least some of them are becoming aware of it.

As far as the management thing goes, I prefer to not have them over my shoulder, but it is a sad reflection on management style when your director is at a meeting and a "new" nurse who has been there for two years has no idea who she is.

meanmaryjean, DNP, RN · Sep 4, 2012

Bumping this thread - looking for more input. Help as sista' out, will you?? :)

jewelrnmom · Sep 5, 2012

1)What characterizes a 'night shift friendly' employer? Someone who schedules more than 1 day off inbetween working a few days in a row, someone who has two different times for meetings one for day shift and night shift

2)What characterizes a 'night shift UNfriendly' employer? Someone who decides to call in the middle of the day wanting to know if you could work a few days in the future (Just send me a text I am sleeping), scheduling only one day off after working 5 nights in a row. someone who just throws tasks on night shift because day shift is too busy (or so they say...)

3) What would you do to make night shift better if you could? allow for less "tasks" during night shift and transfer those to a non clinical employee so nurses can go and do NURSING care, Change the schedule to allow for three days off in a row, text the employee or call them during their shift so they can sleep during the day

4) What specific things does your employer do that is either night shift friendly or night shift UNfriendly? All those that I stated above, only have 1 day off to recoop all the days you put in, they call during my sleep time, schedule non clinical tasks to be completed on nights just because the day shift doesnt want to do them.

lindseylpn · Sep 5, 2012

Unfriendly:

Scheduling meetings in the middle of the day.

Calling you in the middle of the day.

Scheduling all treatments, foley changes, blood draws, labs, iv changes in the middle of the night because, "we have less to do", even though we have just as much work as dayshift with less staff. People just "love" to be woken up at 3am to have their catheter changed too.

Not being able to call in sick because, so and so can't handle nights and won't come in even though they are on call or they person on call is "asleep" and didn't hear their pager etc.

Having to find your own relief when dayshift calls in even though you have a million things to do.

Always being short staffed or having your staff pulled to another unit.

Locking the breakroom at night, no access to food and you can't leave your unit for break anyways because there is no one to Cover for you.

Dayshift gets a free or discounted meal in the cafeteria but, we get nothing.

Ratio of 1 nurse/ 2 cnas to 55-60 patients on nights and 3 nurses/4-5 cnas on days (nursing home)

Only allowing staff to pick up their paychecks from like 12p-4p etc.

I agree with a poster above about never getting our rewards for nurses day, holidays, etc by the time we get to work there will be some deflated balloons, chip crumbs in the bottom of a bowl, a dried up piece of cheese on a tray, a squished piece of cake with the icing scraped off, while the dayshift walk out with plates made up for their husbands, kids or 2nds for themselves.

Not offering any kind of differential.

Friendly: I once worked for a company that would schedule night shift meetings for 10-11pm and give us our checks a day early and that honestly is the only thing i can think of.

sleepRN, ADN, BSN, RN · Sep 6, 2012

Friendly at my hospital!

Meetings are 3 times a day to accommodate all shifts.

We have an assistant manager whose hours are 5p to 1a to support a seamless transition to night shift (our hours are 11p to 7a)

24 hour coffee shop

Unit manager has stated we can call her ANYTIME if need be (of course I would leave that as a last resort)

Managers help night-shifters come up with projects they can do at night (beyond regular duties) for points toward clinical ladder

Self scheduling so we can work together to come up with our own preferred schedule

Shift differential