WHODEYzach

By the way, I'm a male nurse.

Hello all. I have been working as an RN since June '13. I work nights on a Med/Surg floor. For the most part I like it. And I do prefer nights to days. I feel that night shift is more autonomous and there's less hands in the cookie jar so to speak. And I really like the people I work with. But my sleeping patterns are all over the place. I don't have any trouble sleeping during the day but I'm always exhausted. Before nursing school, I was a health and fitness nut. I would workout 5-6 days a week. I'm really wanting to get back into a good routine. Now I'm not expecting to workout 6 days a week but I would like to workout 4 days week. I'm also in school part-time for my BSN which doesn't help. So my question is... Have any of you night shift nurses figured out a good diet and fitness routine that you were able to follow?

Depends on the med. If it's Dilaudid and the order calls for 0.5mg and the vial is 1mg per 1ml then I usually use a 0.5ml insulin needle to draw it up and then I inject it into a flush. But for a drug like Ativan an insulin needle wouldn't work because Ativan is too thick and viscous for an insulin needle. Let's say my order calls for 1mg Ativan and the vial is 2mg per 1ml. In this case, I use a plastic safety needle and draw up 0.5ml in a 3ml syringe. I then switch from the safety needle and use a 20g needle and inject the Ativan into a flush. But I dilute just about everything unless the order tells me not to. Like Reglan for example.