12 hour nights:Staff tired of them

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layna

124 Posts

Some of the doctors suggested that we do a rotation. Our hospital is unionized and the higher seniors who are on premanent days say NO WAY to a rotation. This makes it difficult for night staff to get a chance to have somewhat of a dayschedule ever.

sbic56, BSN, RN

1,437 Posts

Specializes in Obstetrics, M/S, Psych.

Rotating shifts wreaks havoc on the body and mind. Most people like to depend on a routine. The best answer is to have people work the shift they desire. If someone is a day person you really can't pay them enough to work nights for any length of time, but good diffs do help a night nurse stay put.

layna

124 Posts

Most of the people in my unit are "day" people. I only know of one who actually likes to work nights. It would be great to work the shift you desire, but not realistic in this unit. The only way for us is a change in shift differential and some "night shift survival" education.

tnnurse2002

5 Posts

I am a nightshift worker and I love it. Unfortunately, not all of us like 12 hour shifts. 8 hours is enough. The money is not an issue. Its having enough energy left to enjoy things outside of work. Having two days off in a row is important to most of us because we sleep away our first day off.

PhantomRN

299 Posts

I agree with tnnurse2002, when I worked nights l liked them. They gave us a decent diff...2.75 for nights, that was okay.

But I left nights because of two reasons:

1. the schedule....when the girl would make the schedule she would put me on for 3-4 days in a row...then 1 day off and back on for another. Well I stated multiple times to give me 2on and then 2 off. This should not have been to difficult as the majority of us wanted to do 2 on then 2 off.

The reasons were this:

A. the sceduler liked 3 days or more on before she had a day off.

B. other shifts rotated into nights and THEY got their preferred Nights.......NOT US.

Reason 2. We were treated like second class citizens. No inservices where given at a convenient time for us, when there were parties etc day and eves would get pizza and we got nothing...they would go so far as to get rid of the evidence. We were never included in any of the planning....we would just get a letter later that we had acquired new duties curtosy (sp) of day shift, but we had no input.

PhantomRN

299 Posts

Now that I am done ranting, I will offer a few solutions from a night persons perspective.

1. If you have rotators or PT, Give NIGHTS their preferred schedule.

2. Have a night person do the scheduling she or he will know the staff better than a day person.

3. Put some inservices on CD or video so we can watch during our down time.

4. If you have something important that all should know, put it out in written form and leave it in a central location.

5. It is not mandatory that mngt show up on nights occasionally, if you do the following..........call us once in a while just to see how things are going and see if we have any questions or concerns..(tell the staff first that you are implemetnign this)...but first find out a good time to call IE when we are not swamped.

NEXT Staff mtgs: many solutions:

Have a secretary do the minutes and distribute to nights to keep them current.

Put the staff mtg on video so we can watch if we did nt attend so we can give feedback.

Schedule mtg at change of shift.

Make less meetings mandatory for nights....It is easy to be there for a day meeting if you work days. SO if you want the other shifts to do 6 a yr how about 4 for nights.

Give staff a pre-meeting minutes....ie tell them what is to be discussed so if they cant come because they need to sleep they can still give input, verbally to mngt or CREATE forms for written input.

DO NOT start a program that gives nights a new job until nights has at least heard about the pros and cons.......(Most night people will agree to help the other shifts with out question.....we just dont like it shoved down our throats.)

I am sure there are many more.

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