Question: What's so bad about the night shift?

[LadyEJ BSN, RN]

I hear so many bad things about the night shift! I plan on working the night shift when I graduate, mainly because I am a night owl. Does anyone enjoy working the night shift? What are the pros and cons? Maybe I should rethink my decision:icon_roll

[MoopleRN]

You'll hear a lot of bad things about ANY shift if you listen long enough. Work all 3 shifts, make up your own mind and keep into consideration, your shift preference will change depending on your family/unit/location/whim etc.... Personally, I love night shift. Generally speaking~

PROs:

no meals/fewer meds (maybe)

phone is quiet

family/visitors are gone

more time to actually go thru the chart/read progress notes

shift diff

CONs:

the hours/trying to adjust your sleep to family/the real world

the yawns that hit every night between 3-5 regardless of how busy you are

trying to clean up 2nd shift's mess and leave things nice for days when you're busy

less resources

Both lists go on and on.... Truth is, you'll never know which shift is right for you until you work them all.

[RNperdiem, RN]

I avoid nights.

I have a hard time staying awake for the drive home sometimes, and that is not safe.

Chronic sleep deprivation takes its toll.

Daytime sleeping is more interrupted by the phone, the lawnmowers and the leafblowers.

Agitated patients go completely nuts at night.

There is less help at night.

If you page the doctor, he is likely a cross-covering MD who barely knows your patient and will give you "band-aid" solutions to patient problems and leave the real decision making to the daytime docs on rounds.

In ICU, more admissions seem to come at night.

[NeoNurseTX, RN]

odd sleeping hours, lab draws, MDs that don't know the patients.

love everything else!

[Elvish, BSN, DNP, RN, NP]

For these are the pros:

I see my family more working 12hr nights than 12hr days

I work weekend nights and the weekend night diff is really good @ my place

I get time to read through my pt's hx (actually, that's a must while we do chart checks)

Don't have the million people fighting over my patient and her chart

Cons for me:

My whole life revolves around how much sleep I get

Mandatory educational stuff is always during the week and during the day

Less help (that is huge)

I work mother/baby and my patients do NOT sleep all night

Stuff gets given to us to do because there is this notion that our patients DO sleep all night.

Sigh...

[emilysmom,RN]

I am a new "non-traditional" nurse on a med surg floor. I am currently doing 4 eight hr shifts a week that includes everyother weekend. I worked nite shift as an aide while in school. I have more problems when I do 3 nites in a row. By the third nite I am exhausted no matter how much sleep I get. My kids are school aged and they are very good about letting me sleep on the weekends or when they are off. I like the slower pace, it gives me time to think things out. I do not like the fact that AM nurses think we should know every little detail of all our pts which can be 7pts. Some nites I can do research but not usually and I don't take my entire break. We usually only have 1 aide on the entire floor, and 4 nurses.

[Thornbird]

I am a night owl and prefer night shift. I never have a problem sleeping during the day, but always have trouble sleeping at night. My "clock" is backward :)

I like that the atmosphere is more casual, less admin around. I like that I can spend time and really talk to a patient who needs the extra TLC. I don't mind that some places give nights a lot of "chores", I like to keep busy.

I don't like that others often have the attitude that night shift is easy and we "do nothing". If we had the same staff numbers that day shift does, there would be not much work. But, we generally half or less than days. I don't like that everything mandatory is in the daytime. How would they like to get up at 3AM for mandatory meetings? As mentioned the docs can be a problem, won't repeat that.

You also get to know your co-workers better which can be a pro or co. You have to depend more on teamwork.

I'd say give it a try if you think staying awake won't be a problem. Also, a lot of times new urses have to start on nights. Then they take the open day or eve positions, so those are less likely to be open fo new hires.

[sunray12]

I'm pre-nursing but nights sound good to me because I am a night owl. I work days and I've still had times where I struggled to stay awake behind the wheel simply because of running a sleep deficit so it is not necessarily a night shift problem. The right shift for you is one where you won't have problems getting enough sleep when you're supposed to be asleep.

[mochabean]

I don't like working at nights because it messes up my internal clock. I'm used to waking up early, going to bed at a certain time, and getting a straight 7-8 hours of sleep. When I work nights, I go home and sleep for 3-4 hours and when I wake up I can't go back to sleep. Then when I start working the night shift around 7pm, that's when I become really tired. It's such a struggle to stay awake for 12 hours when you're so tired! It took almost a week for my body to return to normal. I'll do nights once a while, but not all the time.

[qcumba]

I hate night shift , purely because I dont really sleep during thre day and even if I do I still feel exhausted, sleeping is like a hobby for me I love it and it just doesnt feel right in the day, here in SA we rotate our shifts so we do 2 weeks day and 2 weeks night, so your body clock gets so confused! and I cant handle the quiet, I get bored very quickly.

[Harleygirl]

Good-

Quiet (some of the time)

You get really close to your coworkers

Not so many meds usually

No meals, fewer accuchecks and sliding scale insulins

Bad-

If you need ancillary departments, either you page or do it yourself

Not being able to sleep in the daytime

The feeling you get after not being able to sleep, nauseated, headache, general yuck

I have worked nights three times during my nursing career. The last time I worked nights my body thought it was going into menopause and I am in my early 30's. Talk about a red flag. I promptly found a day job and the symptoms stopped. I am still trying to lose the weight I gained during that time.

[9livesRN, BSN, RN]

right now i go to scholl in the mornigs/afternoon and work afternoon - midnight!

i now find out that i will get tired, and as soon as i hit the bed my eyes get wide open! and i am full of it!!!

i hope that it continues this way so i can get night shift, next year!

[DoeRN]

I am another night owl. I don't have any problems sleeping during the day. I have worked night shift for the most part for 5 years. I am sleep deprived now because I have family here for Christmas and they can't grasp the concept that sister, aunt, cousin needs to sleep during the day. So they keep waking me up asking for stuff. But other than that I love nights. (next year I may ship my family to my mother's house or a hotel).

I like not having 30 billion people in the nursing station. The family for the most part is gone. I can spend a little more time with my patients. I do have more patients than day shift so sometimes I can't. I can read charts and give a complete medical history in report and not just the admitting dx. Lucky for us if we have a patient code though we do have a crosscover doc we still get just as much help with them as the day shift. It was even better when I was in the ICU because we ran our own codes and the docs worked 30 hour shifts so they knew the patients. We had our own set of docs in the ICU they did not float to different floors. I like that I get paid more on nights. But we do get dumped on sometimes by the day shift.