I am an RN in Rochester, NY and around here nurses are hired for day/eve/night-- a nurse may have primarily day and eve shifts but must be able to work a min. number of night shifts. The only straight shift you can get is straight nights. No straight days, no straight eves. Eveyone has to work at least 4 weekend shifts a month.
Curious as to how other hospitals in other cities/states around the country manage this. Wondering if any place has a regular day staff, an eve staff, a night staff, and a weekend staff. If eveywhere nights are mandatory.
I am so tired of the hospital hours. I am only working per diem where I am now--psych ED-- so that I won't have to work nights. Mentally and physically I just CAN'T do it. I am so disoriented when I wake after sleeping in the the day time--and have a really time even sleeping at all--get 2-3 hours at most. I feel like crap mentally and just feel really depressed when i have to work nights. So for my sanity I had to take a cut in hours and pay to go per diem just to avoid nights..............How are these things in other parts of the country? Curious.
I've never had a nursing job where we rotated shifts, other than having to rotate to days for a couple of weeks at a time at my first RN job. I was hired for night shift, but there were shortages on days so the new grads all rotated to days for a couple of weeks at a time every month to six weeks. I had applied for days but was told that new grads always went to nights. Then after orientation, my boss tried to get me to go to days but I didn't want to! Nights was a slower pace (most of the time!) for learning purposes and my co-workers were a lot more fun. So the rotation was the compromise until she could hire another nurse, lol!
Rotating between shifts is not easy, I did it for several months twice, once when I was in my early 20s pre-kids, and once in my early 30s with a newborn. I was working day shift 2-3 days and night shift 2 days every week. Like to have killed me, especially the latter time. Felt like I never slept. I feel your pain.
Good luck on your job interview...maybe you won't have worry about working this wonky schedule anymore!!
Yeah most here do work their 4 shifts in an every other weekend pattern but they do have the choice to do like every Saturday or every Sunday, instead of Sat AND Sun every other weekend. I think if they switched to each person being hired for JUST days, JUST eves or JUST nights....they would have minimal coverage for eves and even worse for nights. I think that is why they do it that way here. The majority of people want straight days. How do you all get the staff that WANTS straight eves, straight nights??????
I think days is probably the most popular shift as far as requests go, but those who work the "off" shifts of nights and eves do it for good reasons, and wouldn't want to rotate them. I do nights because it works best for my family, and I get quite a bit more money than my daytime counterparts. People who work evenings, I've found, oftentimes like to be able to go out after work, and then sleep in late :) Mostly not 'morning people', so that shift works for them. I'm also not likely to be happy rising at 5 am to get to work, for me it's 5 pm, but I guess it's a matter of what you get used to (or want to get used to).
When you say "straight eves" or "straight nights", I'm guessing you're referring to 5 8's a week. We DON'T get that, except for just a few who want that: almost all of our eves/nights are covered by daytime people who work 7a-7p, and then night people who work 7p-7a. So there's hardly anyone ON the evening shift in our unit that does just the 8's. We also have 11a-11p, so the full eve shift is covered by one person. Occasionally we throw an 11p-11a in there, so that if it looks sketchy for daytime coverage, the first half of the morning is covered by a night person who stayed four more hours.
We usually are worst-staffed on evenings than nights; nights is worse-staffed than days. But there's PUH-LENTY of times I see the dayshift bemoaning their understaffing. I think the answer is just to get more nurses on the floor, on ALL shifts--how's that for ridiculously simplistic?
whipping girl in 07, RN
697 Posts
I've never had a nursing job where we rotated shifts, other than having to rotate to days for a couple of weeks at a time at my first RN job. I was hired for night shift, but there were shortages on days so the new grads all rotated to days for a couple of weeks at a time every month to six weeks. I had applied for days but was told that new grads always went to nights. Then after orientation, my boss tried to get me to go to days but I didn't want to! Nights was a slower pace (most of the time!) for learning purposes and my co-workers were a lot more fun. So the rotation was the compromise until she could hire another nurse, lol!
Rotating between shifts is not easy, I did it for several months twice, once when I was in my early 20s pre-kids, and once in my early 30s with a newborn. I was working day shift 2-3 days and night shift 2 days every week. Like to have killed me, especially the latter time. Felt like I never slept. I feel your pain.
Good luck on your job interview...maybe you won't have worry about working this wonky schedule anymore!!