SqueakRN

I love this article. Thank you for posting it. It is exactly what I was looking for in terms of how the workday would be laid out for this type of position. May I ask how you learned of this position? Did you search directly on the company's website or through a job search site such as Indeed.com or Monster, etc?

Sometimes people need to taste a little misery to appreciate the lack of! LOL

I started off years ago wanting to eventually work in the ICU and am currently about to leave the hospital for good to work a desk job with no weekend, holiday, and night shifts --- and I'm thrilled about it!!! But I do understand that desire to be in the trenches, so to speak, when first graduating school. I think a lot of it depends on where you live. If you live in a highly saturated area then trying to move into acute care later may be more difficult than not. I live in a highly saturated area, and what I see a lot of new grads who want acute care doing is moving away for a couple years to get that acute care experience in a city or sometimes state that still has that nursing shortage. Then they come back here, and they have a better chance of getting hired on in the hospitals. It also depends on what ultimately you want in your career. Do you plan eventually to go to CRNA school? Want to be an NP? Want to work in public health but just want the acute care experience? I won't lie. Acute care is rough. Real rough. I'm very glad to be leaving it, but I've been at this for nearly a decade, so I'm looking at this a little differently than you are, I'm sure. Good luck to you!

Well, I don't know what to do. I've posted on here about how working nights has been tough for me, especially physically. My body did start to become "adjusted" to nights after about 6 months and really trying to stick to a vampire-like schedule on my days off. Well, I went on vacation for a couple weeks last month in which I'd gone back to living on a day schedule (big mistake) and came back to being cancelled frequently due to low census, which was actually fine with me. Now our census is back up, and I'm doing back-to-back shifts again.... and my body is having a hard time once again. Enough to have landed me in the ER twice, WHILE at work! One time was for a terrible headache and dizziness in which I totally lost focus and began to feel unsafe. I told the charge nurse that, and she sent me to the ER. The second time was for heart palpitations... and I've had palpitations before, but these were different, and they happened twice towards the end of my shift. They lasted several minutes each time, and I felt very weak and lightheaded, just a flush of uneasiness and wooziness. The first palpitations happened right after I'd left a patient's room and was starting to feel very tense due to feeling overloaded. I went into the med room, and that's when it happened. I sat down for several minutes, took long deep breaths, tried to calm my mind. A co-worker took my BP which was 148/96, which is quite high for me, as my SBP usually runs in the 90s-100s, 110 at the most (I'm pretty little and relatively young). I decided to just finish out the shift, try not to freak out about the load of work still ahead of me, and go to the ER after work. Well, then the second bout of palpitations hit.... again, I felt unsafe continuing... Anyway both times happened on my 2nd subsequent night. I don't work more than 2 nights in a row, thank God, but that 2nd night I am a mess! I don't sleep well, despite taking melatonin and Trazadone in the a.m. and then another melatonin in the afternoon (my shift doesn't start until 11pm). I think that my body has reverted back to a day schedule after coming back from vacation, and now I feel like I'm back at square one, with the whole circadian rhythm readjustment! The thing is, I am scared to go back to work now! It is embarrassing plus I HATE that another nurse has to take on my assignments when I leave for the ER! Thankfully, we have break nurses who do not have patient loads, so they were able to take my patients each time I left. I'd already been looking for another job for months and am actually waiting to hear definitively on a job outside of the hospital, a lower stress job and with DAY HOURS, of course!! It is very likely that I will get the final job offer, but the lady said the whole process takes about 1-2 months. I don't know if I can last that long at my current position!! I'm surprised that I've lasted on nocs as long as I have!!! I'm not sure what to do here. Any advice? I want to just quit my job but what if the new job doesn't work out? I think it will, but I'm a practical pessimist. I'm not the sole breadwinner of the household, just to give a picture of my financial life.

So I've on nights for some months now, and my body has adjusted to it for the most part. It was really tough at first, and I still really hate it, but I'm able to handle it better physically.Lately I've been noticing that I've gotten really cranky, impatient, and generally a pain in the butt. I used to feel gratitude for everything, but I don't feel that humble anymore. I am not sure if keeping these vampire hours has changed my personality, or what! I've also noticed I'm less compassionate than before. =( I'm hoping that's all that it is and as soon as I can secure a day position I'll go back to being the grateful compassionate person I used to be.Can working nights screw up your personality this much?? Maybe this is a silly question, I don't know.... =(

Thanks, enchantmentdis! Are you doing hospice through Kaiser? Right now there a few ambulatory jobs open, but they are either on-call or short hour! I'm so desperate right now though .... and yes, I too work med-surg/tele.... and I hate it! LOL!

Does anyone have experience working in a Kaiser clinic? What are the working conditions like, what do you like or dislike about working there, and how easy is it to transfer from working inpatient at Kaiser to outpatient/clinic ?I currently work in-patient and have not yet reached the 6-month mark but when I do I will be very ready to transfer. I am not liking inpatient care or working nights. I am not a new grad, btw.Thanks!

Thank you, everyone, for your replies. Well, this is ironic..not really, mostly disturbing-- but last night, I actually had to leave work to go the ER due to weakness/lightheadedness. It really was rotten. Really rotten. I'm gonna have to talk to my manager about switching. If not, then I have no choice but to leave. I cannot keep this up, and apparently my body is screaming at me to stop.

I've been on Topamax for a little over a week. I had to get on it after the herbal supplements and acupuncture which I had been using to control my headaches were NOT cutting it anymore after starting nocs. I hope it helps.

Horsebytes, I've tried it. I've tried the regular one and the sustained release. It does nothing to me for some reason. Thank you for the suggestion, though.

This is after 25 years that you get the free healthcare.

I used to be very active before starting This job and still try to get some form of activity in, like at least long walks with my dog. I used to do lots of yoga, ballet, running, and HIIT training, but it seems like the yoga makes my headaches worse nowadays. I have been to my pcp about this and have been started on Topamax, so we'll see if that has any effect. My health has definitely gone down the toilet, and I am having to take Trazodone now to get even 4 hours of sleep day or night. My body is really rebelling more than I expected it would.

Exit96-Thanks for your reply. Yeah, I used to like the night shift, also, when I was younger. When I first started out in healthcare a little over 10 years ago, I was a CNA and worked nights 5 nights a week and could come home and sleep like a baby for 8 hours straight during the day no problem! Also, when I was a new grad and a couple years thereafter I had little problem adjusting to the 12 hour night shift routine. Well, after tasting the Day life and having to go back, it feels like torture. My body is rebelling big-time. I could kick myself for doing this to myself, I really could. Good luck to you, too.

I started a night shift position a few months ago on a med-surg floor and am not tolerating it well at all. I used to sleep like a baby, anytime anywhere, and now the most I can sleep is in 4 hour chunks, day or night. I have tried all the suggestions: black-out shades, masks, fans, warm baths, relaxation techniques before bedtime, adhering to a night schedule on my "days" off, etc etc... and I still get very interrupted sleep. I'm exhausted all the time and it's doing a real number on my migraines. I have CONSTANT headaches and neck pain. Also, I feel my dysthymia threatening to crawl back in my life. In short, I'm miserable. I'm not a new grad and actually left a nice job with regular hours for this current job. Why? In hindsight, it was due to part peer pressure, the "grass is greener" phenomenon, the offer of much more money, and better benefits. So there lies the dilemma. This current job offers fantastic benefits and, yes, much more money. The current job offers free healthcare for life if you stay with them for a certain number of (several) years which my old job does not offer. I do have the option to go back to my old job but they only have a per diem position open for me. I could go on my spouse's insurance, however, if I took the per diem position at my old job, and I'm sure I could eventually move back into a full-time position in time with full benefits. Basically, I'm at a quandary because I feel so physically miserable and am not crazy about the current job. I think I was crazy to leave my old position to work the floor again, especially when I know so many nurses are trying to leave the floor! Also, the current place I work is behemoth, and sometimes I feel I've sold my soul to work there. The culture there is... weird and different, to say the least. But long-term and practically-speaking, it would be great for me, if my body could just tolerate this God-forsaken shift. In the short-term and health-wise, I think going back to my old job would be wiser. What should I do??