What is your life like?

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Hello there,

I am a nurse-to-be, and one of the areas I am interested in is Neonatal Nursing. I would love it if you gave me a snippet of your life, if you have children, if your job allows you enough time for your family, what the hours are like, the level of stress, the pay, and your overall satisfaction with this area of nursing.

I am trying to get a good impression of all the fields of nursing I am intrigued by so that I can play with ideas before I go to school.

Thank you,

Stephanie

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Specializes in NICU, PICU,IVT,PedM/S.

I work a .75 position. So I work Thur-Sat then Wed and Thur. 12 hour night shifts. So I only wok 12 a month! It is great. When I need a break I take off the wed/Thur and have 11 days off! It works great for vacations, shopping.....I have plenty of time to run my two girls to their activities and still do the things I like to do, like scrapbook! I usually work overtime in the days that I am already working so my days off are mine!

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I work 3 12hour nights a week as well......but I am contemplating on joining the weekend program.....where I work Sat and Sun 12 hour nights and get a 80 hour paycheck every two weeks with a little higher salary........but the down side to it all is there are no benefits.....I wanted to use the benefit of them paying for me to go to school but I guess I can sacrifice that benefit and pay for myself to go to school but have the whole week off to attend classes go on vacation and stay on top of my household.........

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Why is working nights so popular? Is it better pay? Do you not find it difficult to be working all night -- 12 hours straight (!!!) -- and then sleep all day? Or do you sleep all day? Are there many nurses who work the regualr 5-day-a-week, day-shift?

Thanks for the words!

Also, could you tell me what working in Neonatal Intensive Care is like? What do you do? Is it quiet a lot, because of the babies, or the exact opposite?

Thanks again!

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Specializes in NICU, PICU,IVT,PedM/S.

I like nights because there are no others staff there! We have a large unit that has several social workers, case managers, nutritionist, a pharmasist, other MD's consulting, ultrasound, management...........

I get my chart when I want it and we all work very well together. Sometimes there may not be a lot of experience but the older people show the newer people how to pull together to work as a team. Day shift seems to work next to each other with out helping.

Plus the added bonus of $4.00 an hour! I would have to work an extra shift to make up the money. I get about 5-6 hours of sleep between my shifts. We look at it as one more assessment and one more monitor vital signs.

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Specializes in NICU.

I work in a Level II nursery, 3 12 hour shifts a week, nights. Usually I have no problem sleeping, but the cat woke me up too early this afternoon. I took him out to keep my husband company, but he was out.

There are no "normal" hours doing nursing care in a nursery. The only jobs with 8hr days, 5 days a week are paperwork jobs.

With 12 hour shifts we can have continuity of care, which means we can report off to the same person sometimes for several days. You can see the changes in the baby if you can do care like that.

We also go to high risk deliveries and C/S, with a hospitalist who is a pediatrician working 24 hr shifts, but does try to sleep at night. LOL.

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