Night Shift ANM

SummerGarden, BSN, MSN, RN · Feb 25, 2015

Are you new to night shift? If so, I can understand your confusion of how nurses work at night. Those of us who have worked in other roles at night know one thing is universal about night shift: Night shift has limited resources and so if you really want to gain a lot of work experience, working nights is the way to go in any role!

With that said, my role overlaps the other nurse leadership at night. For example, my role is that of a House Supervisor for my department (I coordinate and triage appropriate admissions and discharges for my floor) and Department Nurse Manager (I run the floor, implement and measure various initiative outcomes, talk to families/patients/etc and ensure quality coordination of care, support safe and best practices, supervise/support and discipline staff, etc.... like any good Department Nurse Manger because no one else is available to do so at night). Therefore, no, I do not feel limited in my abilities to gain management work experience.

In fact, I think the worse shift to work as an entry-level nurse manager is day shift because there are too many people doing the various management tasks leaving me to potentially perform limited ones and potentially stifling my ability to think and act on my own as a leader! Good luck. :)

JMaeRN · Feb 25, 2015

Thanks for the input. I am not new to night shift, just new to the ANM role but I was wondering what other ANMs do because I feel like a glorified charge nurse, which is the role I left for this one. I feel like I have so many charge responsibilities that there isn't enough time for the things I expected/hoped to be doing. I could have stayed with my much better, previous employer if this is all I'm going to be doing for this healthcare system.

SummerGarden, BSN, MSN, RN · Feb 25, 2015

Thanks for the input. I am not new to night shift, just new to the ANM role but I was wondering what other ANMs do because I feel like a glorified charge nurse, which is the role I left for this one. I feel like I have so many charge responsibilities that there isn't enough time for the things I expected/hoped to be doing. I could have stayed with my much better, previous employer if this is all I'm going to be doing for this healthcare system.

Ah!! I think your problem can be one of two things.... One, you either are comfortable with the Charge Nurse role so much, you turned your new ANM role into a Charge Nurse role without trying... Or two, you have not fully clarified the expectations of your new ANM role with your staff or your manager and so you are taking on the role of Charge Nurse. Either way, this is your fault. However, this is not the end of the world because you can change this situation.

Speaking of charge nurses, do you have them on your floor on your shift? I do, so I am making it clear that I am not a second charge nurse. If the charge is sick, I will designate another one. Why? Because as you have already pointed out, there are other things we need to do to get through our shifts that cannot be done if we are also acting as the charge nurse.

With that said, if you do not have a charge nurse assigned to your shift, then talk to your manager about hiring them. If he/she says "No" there is another solution. For example, I once worked a floor where the Director did not want to hire additional charge nurses for the night shift, so the night shift Staff Nurses got to volunteer and rotate the position. This helped the Staff RNs gain Charge Nurse work experience while allowing the night shift manager to take care of his/her other managerial duties and responsibilities.

By the way, as someone else pointed out to another poster in another thread, if you do not stand up as a leader to run your floor, your floor will run you! So step up and take control. Opportunities as you know do not fall into your lap, so sometimes you have to create them. So turn this positon into the career position that you wish it to be. Good luck. :)