Why Are 12 hour shifts the standard?

[Alpha13]

Versus 8 hour shifts that almost all other jobs use? What benefit is there to having nurses work longer shifts?

Thanks

[Ruby Vee, BSN]

do many hospitals with 12 hours shifts, usually do it with 3 shifts a week and then one week 4 shifts a week? i'd hate to do a 4th shift even if it's only 1 week. i'd just prefer the 36 hours/week period!

the hospital i'm at now strongly encourages to work an average of 40 hours/week -- or 20 shifts over 6 weeks. that means you're working 3 12s four weeks out of the six, and 4 12s the other two weeks. no problem when i was younger -- in fact, when i wanted out of my marriage i was working 5 12s a week whenever i could get them just for the overtime! now i'm finding it more difficult . . . so i work 90% -- 3 12s a week.

most of the hospitals i've been in over the years prefer their icu nurses to work 90%. that way if they're in a bind and really hard up, they can get you to work two extra shifts every six weeks without paying overtime. and they get to hire more bodies for the same number of ftes. that way there are more names on the list to call for extra shifts. it actually seems to work out better for the hospital that way. works out great for me, too -- as most of them have paid full time benefits for 90%.

ruby

[VivaLasViejas, ASN, RN]

I'm one of only about a half-dozen nurses on our floor who work 8's. I do four shifts per week, and while I wish I could handle 12's, I know better than to even try.........I did them when I was younger, and I remember feeling so fatigued the last 2-3 hours of those long shifts that I quite frankly didn't care whether the patients' needs were met or not. That's a dangerous way to feel, especially since everything tends to go to hell around 0600 anyway, but that's how 12-hour shifts affected me..........thank goodness my hospital is flexible, and I was permitted to work four 8's per week rather than three 12's.

Now I have what is arguably the best of all worlds.........I work 11A-7P, weekdays only, and never more than three consecutive shifts. It doesn't allow me to pick up much overtime, but as I've learned over the years, the extra money isn't worth the personal cost in terms of exhaustion, time away from family, and personal interests. But, that's just me.

[P_RN, ADN, RN]

First off I HATE 12 hour shifts.....but think about it. You only need to schedule 4 shifts.

Call them A shift and B shift.

When A shift nurses are ON B shift nurses are OFF and vice-versa.

Second the 1st Gulf War took about a third of our staff....12 I think, so there weren't enough nurses and techs to cover 3 shifts adequately.

The boss did some creative staffing. On paper it looked pretty good.

At our place full time was anything over 36h a week.

So making all FTEs 0.9 nurses instead of 1.0 nurses, for every 10 FTE's allotted another nurse salary that went to OT.

36h one week 48h the nexy = 84 hours. You got OT for the extra 8h and werent dinged for only 36 on the first week.

The 12 h were very trying on those of us who had a commute. (Mine was an hour each way.) The townies loved it.

All 8 hour shifts were done away with on that floor. The other floors tried creatively 4, 6, 10,16 etc. Someone always had to take up the slack.

I see a lot of different places doing 12s now that I never saw a couple of years ago.

[SheriLynnRN]

I think that 12 hour shifts also provide greater continuity of care for pts, when everybody works 12s consistently. My unit has 8s, 12s and even 4 hour shifts to fill in the gaps from 7p-11p. I think that arrangement actually makes things worse. On the few occasions that I have switched off an assignment with the same nurse for a couple days in a row, I beleive that the pts got much better care.

[rach_nc_03]

During school, I worked 30 hours a week in a weekend-option tech job- two twelves every sat/sun, and a six-hour shift some other time in the week. I was commuting 100 miles round-trip for school 3 weekdays and going to 8 hours of clinicals on the other two. I longed for the day when I was only going to have to work 3 days a week!

Well, I started on the unit in my RN job on July 11th. During my 12-week orientation, I have to stick with a preceptor's schedule, and my primary preceptor on days prefers to work her 3 12-hour shifts in a row, then have a stretch of days off. So far, I've really hated it- my body just can't take 36 out of 72 hours on my feet. I have issues with insomnia, and when I get home from work (usually at 8:30 or 9 at night, as it's taking me longer to do everything, since i'm so green), i find it exceedingly difficult to get to sleep..then I have to get up at 5 AM and start all over again. One day of that is no problem; two days is unpleasant...but three days of that is really not fun. I'm having health issues, and the long stretches between those three-day clusters make it difficult for me to retain skills that are still very new.

Lucky for me, our orientation committe is fantastic- I expressed my concerns about the large gaps to the scheduling people, and they re-did my orientation schedule so I could have fewer days off between groups of shifts. I still was wishing i didn't have to do 12 hour shifts, because they're beating me up. Then, I did some math, and changed my mind:

New grads make $18.54 an hour at my hospital; night shift diff is roughly $5.00, and weekend diff is around $5.50 (it's increased in the last week, but I don't know how much). I prefer, personally, nights and weekends. Additionally, our unit is chronically understaffed, so any overtime shift we sign up for (meaning past 40 hours a week) also nets $10 extra per hour, on top of overtime pay at time and a half, plus shift differential. Thus, if I worked my 3 shifts during the week, then picked up one overtime shift on a weekend night, the pay would be per hour:

$18.54 base

$9.27 OT pay

$5.00 night diff

$5.50 weekend diff

$10.00 incentive pay

$48.31 an hour for 8 hours of the shift! The other 4 hours would be at $29.04 an hour.

Obviously, I can't walk away from that, especially since my base pay-rate doesn't quite cover all of my expenses. Were I working 5 days a week in 8 hour shifts, the notion of picking up OT would be a lot less desirable.