I am thinking of joining the military as a nurse and the question that I can't seem to find an answer to is... what kind of shifts do they work. I'm currently a nurse and work mainly 12hr shifts, so that wouldn't be a problem, but various friends of mine are only allowed to work 8hr shifts in their hospitals. What does the military do... specifically NICU? How are the schedules prepared in the military. The job that I have now allows nurses to schedule themselves via computer. We are divided into teams and the team that is allowed to schedule first rotates each month. I'm guessing that military system may not be this far along, but I do want to know how scheduling is done.