MaxNurse

I think there's pros and cons to both 8s and 12s, plus you have to consider the type of nursing you are doing. 12s are great for most people personally and for families...more time away from the job and more time with the family or for yourself. Also if the job setting is mostly low key the 12s are too hard to pull. On the other hand if you are in a high stress, fast paced setting the 12s are very tiresome and i feel the last 4 hours or so of the shift that the patients may begin to suffer due to your fatigue. I've worked both, in slow pace and fast paced settings and personally I liked 12s with the slow pace, but felt overly exhausted doing 12 hours at a face pace. I often wondered if I was giving my patients my best at the end of those shifts. Sometimes I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes opened to drive home, forget about eating .... it was a hot bath and straight to bed! LOL

This is just my opinion, not based on any facts per se. In the area where I live there aren't a lot of male nurses, but the few that I have worked with seems to be taken more seriously by administration. Like when the male goes to them complaining or voicing his opinion about something, we would see changes, where as a female could have complained about the same thing earlier and it was brushed off. Also it seems they are taken more seriously when it comes to patients. For instance (I work in a prison) and when the male nurses give the inmates a direct order, the inmates obey, when a female gives the same order, the inmates obey only after arguing and being threatened with a disciplinary charge. Of course we use this to our advantage. Any complaints that need to be directed to the administration we use the male nurses as our spokeperson

I don't see why an LPN can't give report to the oncoming staff. Seems the one actually taking care of the patients would be able to give a more indepth report. I know where i work we have LPNs who have specific duties and there's a RN that is the charge nurse, the LPNs give report to each other and the RNs give report to one another. This is good in my opinion, concidering there's been many times while giving or receiving report that there's been an "oh yeah i almost forgot to tell you...." This is what i would consider being a con of only RNs giving report, you may forget something and when she gives report she wouldn't know it, therefore something important could be missed. Seems also it's more time comsuming to first give report to your RN and then she in return gives it to the next shift. Does she give it directly to another RN and then that RN has to give report to the oncoming LPNs?? Once again i see the possiblity of info not being translated correctly nor completely. There's nothing like getting it directly from the horse's mouth, so to speak. Sounds like the RN you are talking about my have a big case of RNitis!! This is so sad. In my state the only difference in the duties of RNs and LPNs is that a RN can give patients blood. Other than that, with the proper training an LPN can do anything a RN can do, even be a charge nurse. Is there another supervisor you can voice your concerns to?