Silly Question - Rotating Weekends

[MsBruiser]

Can someone please explain to me how rotating weekends work with 12 hour shifts? Let's say you are scheduled to work Tue, Wed, Thur - will that mean the following week you will work Friday, Sat, Sun - and have all that time between Thur of week 1 and Friday of Week 2 off? Am I getting this right?

Also - how disruptive do you find rotating weekends to your personal wife - especially for the married folks with kids?

[akvarmit]

Hi there! I've been doing the 12hr shift thing for a while. Our hospital allows RN's to do 3 12's per week.......then actually we only get paid for 72hrs. instead of 80. (I have seen other floors do 2 12's and 2 8's in order to still get 80 hours)

I'm not sure what your weekend rotation is, we do "every other". Yes, you're right, if you are doing only 3 shifts a week, you do have a lot of extra days off. But then I find I use that extra time to "catch up" on all the grocery shopping, laundry, and dishes I would have been doing if I was home earlier. When I work 2 or 3 in a row, that's all I do. I don't make plans or go out, cause I'm pretty much pooped! It is a bummer on the weekends, but thankfully my husband and kids are pretty self-entertaining.

We even have one nurse on our floor that will do 3 12hr daylights at the end of one pay then go right to 3 night shifts.......then she's off like 8 days.......then she does it again. (I couldn't do 6 12's in a row like that - I would become a whole different kind of creature!)

[AmyLiz]

I'm going to be doing 3 12 hour shifts in my new job as a dialysis tech once I get out of orientation. My schedule is going to be like this: Mondays, Wednesdays, then alternating Fridays & Saturdays. So one week I'll work M, W, F and the next I'll work M, W, S.