waggy-2

I have been a nurse for nearly 30 years and almost all of it has been on the night shift. It was 11PM to 7:30 AM to start then it was changed to 12.5 hour shifts hour shifs. I love the 12 hour night shifts. I workred MED/SURG, the CCU and currently have been in E.D. for about 13 0r 14 years. I work in a small rural hospital. If the ED is busy, all the other departments are busy Lab, XRAY, Resp. Therapy, Med/ Surg because we send them admissions. We usually have a lot of patients when we get to work at 1800 and sometimes it doesn't stop. i work with great people. We all jump in and help each other, no matter what has to be done and that would include helping on the Med/Surg floor if needed. We have slower nights on occassion and when that happens we may try to sit down and eat our meal in one sitting so it doesn't get cold. We do extra cleaning nd other things, We always do patient teaching with discharge and explain things to our patients and their families. There have been people throughout the year that have said that "Night shift does nothing". That statement is simply not true. Try working the shift before judging it. You may find out that it's not so bad. You will learn a lot.

Hi everyone, I will encourage my children(4 of them)to be whatever they want to be. So far, none of them have expressed a desire to become a nurse. If one of them does, I will encourage them. I love what I do, and have always wanted to be a nurse. My thoughts are that you could made a great deal of money, but if you don't like what you do, then why bother? While I would like more money, who wouldn't, I lvoe what I do. And while some nights suck, this happens at every job. I rather be paid what I'm paid and enjoy what I'm doing, and that's what I try to instill in my children. Enjoy what you do cause you gotta do for a long time. Have a good one, Sue :)

Hi When we are really busy on the med/surg floor,(small hospital also), and there are no patients on OB floor, each nurse from OB (usually 2 on night shift) will come up for four hours each and we have them do vitals, restart IVs, fingersticks in the AM. They can't take a district because a labor patient may come in. But just doing the vitals helps a lot. Sometimes they're not real happy about it, but OH WELL. This gives us time to effectively assess our patients and give meds, etc. I now work in CCU and if we don't have any patients, we do the same thing or go to the ER to help out.