After a short stint with a very BAD SNF job, I found myself unemployed and looking for a new nursing position. (Long story!)
While there was a lot of different positions listed in my area, the majority all seemed to involve night shift work. This is not really a bad thing for me - Looking back on my career, the majority of the time I have been a nurse, I have been working at some time during the night hours.
One of my friends is great with statistics and numbers, and I was sharing this observation with him. He said that this was not a coincidence, but was a logical fact that the majority of nurses were going to work night shift.
Here is his reasoning (as best as I can remember it):
If you have 8 hour shifts, your odds of finding yourself working at midnight are 66%.
Why? Because nurses working 3p-11:30p will still find themselves leaving late or being asked to stay late, and nurses working 11p-6:30p will see midnight as part of their workday routine.
If you have 12-hour shifts, your odds of finding yourself working at midnight are >50%.
Why? Because half the shift is scheduled to work nights, and the other 50% will be offered overtime options at some point.
So even without factoring in the natural tendancy of night nurses to drift into day shift openings on their floors - leaving only night shift positions available for new hires - your best odds of not working at midnight at some point in your nursing career are less than 49%.
The majority of nurses will be burning the midnight oil!
They never mentioned that little tidbit in Nursing School!
