Night shift employees expected to attend things during day??

[ArwenEvenstar]

My husband and I are both RN's. A real irritation for my husband at present (and for me in the past when I used to work at the same hospital as him) was when there were mandatory inservices or meetings AND the only time offerings were during day time hours. What about night shift employees??? Shouldn't there at least be a handful of night time options?? It only seems fair. How would day shift like it if they had to come in at 12 midnight or 2am for a meeting or inservice??

This is the ironic thing: When we lived in another state, we worked at a small 100 bed hospital. When there were mandatory meetings or inservices, this little hospital ALWAYS had some on night shift times! Now we have worked at a large 800 plus bed teaching hospital AND they only offer day shift options. This huge hospital has way more night shift employees, so you'd think they would offer more options for nights...but no, they offer none at all!

How is it at your hospital??? I guess this is particularly an irritation for us because we are "serious" night people. We are natural night owls. We have worked either nights or evenings for close to 20 years by choice. It is a way of life for us. Having to get up in the morning to go to a meeting or inservice is a major inconvenience and disrupts our normal sleep....Like a day shifter having to come in at midnight or 2 am...

Thanks for listening to my vent. More for my husband than me! :wink2: I left the hospital setting almost 4 years ago...not going back!

[flightnurse2b, LPN]

our hospital used to do this to night shifters... we would have mandatory staff inservices for night shift starting either at like 0730 after work or 1500 before work.... but one nurse fell asleep at the wheel and was severely injured after working and then attending the inservice... so my boss hired a night shift educator and our inservices were at 0400 and such..... sad it takes a tragedy to make something right

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

we just had this argument where i work. my manager feels that since night shifters get a differential for working nights, it's ok to force them to come in during their sleep period for a staff meeting or inservice. i think she's got a crummy attitude. it's not as if the icu would get along just fine if no one decided to take the differential and work nights!

[blondy2061h, MSN, RN]

My hospital is really good about this usually, unless it's an extended class that you'll have to go to for several days. Our plain old inservices though are generally offered at least at 7am or 6pm so you can hit it up before or after a shift. Our last inservice was offered at 12 noon or 9pm as well.

[texas2007, BSN, RN]

I work in a very large hospital...our cafeteria officially closes at 2 am, but often by 1, many of the stations are already shut down. Luckily we have inservices offered at all times, I usually make it for the 7p-11p inservice...they offer 1a-5a but hardly anybody signs up for that one, some people prefer to stay after their shift for the 7a-11a inservice but I would never make it home if I attempted that.

[Indy, LPN, LVN]

I will not go to inservices unless they are less than 1 hr and start at 0730. It does screw up the schedule for certs like ACLS so we have several different groups of nightshifters on differering schedules of recerts, so there are people available to cover us. My director either comes in after our shift starts and gives us the monthly staff meeting, or does it right after we gave report on any given morning, sometimes with a day or so warning even. The hospital DON comes in at night quarterly and makes the rounds doing meetings with us, I usually see her around 2300ish. This hospital is quite small, maybe 50 beds if you stretch it and have some babies during flu season.

So the first hospital I worked at, the staff meetings were at 0800 or 1700. We routinely stayed over once a month for over an hour and a half. It was the ONLY way to make sure the manager knew we existed and had opinions! What's more, not attending those meetings would show up badly on your annual evaluation so we were quite motivated.

[RN1982]

I'm not coming in on my off days for a meeting after working a midnight shift and I'm not staying until 8am for a meeting after a midnight shift either.

[MN BigJ]

Next time, call your manager at home at 3:00 am and ask for a briefing.

Did that when I worked on Med surg. She had a habit of calling at 10 or 11 for meaningless things. She did it to all the night shift. Finally one night I had a grip about something, not a big deal, but I called at 0100. She said, "Do you know what time it is? I was sleeping." I simply said, "It sucks when someone wakes you up while you are sleeping doesn't it." She never called in the middle of the day again.

[nelcoy4]

My hospital tries to think of night shift when it come to short meetings. Staff meetings are usually 3pm and 6am. Some classes are held from 5pm-9pm. But if a class is from 8am-4pm, I just don't don't come, unless I'm off the night before and the night of. The last time I went to one I slept the whole time and almost go in an accident on the highway driving home. I'm not putting myself and other drivers at risk because of my job.

[Pat_Pat RN]

Our shifts are 4a-4p. I have a meeting at 10am. Nice!

Our ER supervisor has been having some meetings at 0630, then my med/surg dept. meeting at 0900.

Hey, it's all OT, right?!?

[Virgo_RN, BSN, RN]

Our unit holds our monthly staff meetings at three times. Once in the morning for our night shifters, so they can just come to the meeting when they get off, once in the afternoon for the evening shifters so they can come to the meeting before they go on shift, and then once again in the afternoon so the day shifters can come when they get off.

[nrsang97, BSN, RN]

We have mandatory education coming up. We are offered multiple times. Only one day is a day shift only, but that is unusual. We have morning , afternoon, and evening. Our staff meetings are usually a few different days at various times for day and night shifters. For night shifters at 0530, and 2100, and day shifters 1000, and 1830. So I think our management is pretty good about accomodating everyone.

[Valerie Salva, BSN, RN]

When I worked nocs, I asked the day charge nurse to start taping the mand meetings, so we could listen to the tape on nocs. It worked out well.