Weaker nurses at night?

Aneroo, LPN · May 29, 2009

I see both sides. Most of the night shift nurses I've met were awesome. They are able to do an awesome job without all of the resource that day shift usually has.

However, there have been a few nurses I've known that were kept on night shift due to time management skills (they had went to days and were asked to go back to nights). The have the same patient load on this unit as day shift does, so it wasn't a staffing issue at that point. That is the only "weak" thing I think I've seen, and I don't think that's a weakness. That nurse grew and now that his time management skills have improved, he's stayed on night shift b/c he liked it so much.

Morettia2, BSN, RN · May 30, 2009

I work nights, I am far from weak. If I heard a Doc say that, I would fire back with, "well, since youthink we are weak, I would be prepared to expect an increase in pages b/t the hours of 12am-5am. And when you call back I will say, Oh I am sorry I must have paged the wrong Doctor." Night time in the hosp. does not mean that it's lights out and everyone sleeps. Half the time my pt's have no idea what time it is, and for some reason we have had a major influx of geri-tele pt.'s who are BAD sundowners. And for some reason our pt's always wait till late at night to tell us that they have a problem that had been going on all day, but didn't want to bother anyone during the day, so they tell us at odd times to say, "I have been having this chest pain all day but I figured I would tell you, b/c it's night and your not as busy as the day nurses..." ERRRRRRRRR...."No I just have double the pt. load at night. Day shift has 3 pt's, I have 6. I am not busy running all over the unit, not at all. And you know, at 2am I have access to a whole slew of MD's to help you (the house MD and the tele resident)....unlike the day shift. Oh and did you bother telling any of the 10 MD's that saw you all day long bout this chest pain you have?"

No matter what shift u work, you are never weak. Hey nursing is 24/7...and if doc's wanna think night shift is weak, then they should remember if it wasn't for night shift then they would never know what happens in a 24hour period. We don't sleep, we work, period, no matter what shift you work.

kcochrane · May 30, 2009

At our facility it isn't easy getting a night position. New grads go onto the day shift until the nurse manager feels they are fully trained. I worked days for 2 1/2 years before I decided to move to nights. I had to wait for one of the night nurses to retire (17 years). I can tell you that at least on my floor, you cannot be weak. As a LPN I do not have a RN on the unit as I did on days. I have to know when to call the supervisor. I have to make sure agency staff or floats know what is going on. It is not a shift for someone that cannot make decisions or lead.

I leave nothing for the day shift that I cannot do at night. I put in work orders, order meds, finish what couldn't be done on the other shifts. I cannot make appts or I would. There are nights when the **** hits the fan and believe me a weak nurse would fail.