Working days

[lgreen]

Is it possible to avoid working nights throughout one's career? I can hanlde weekends and holidays if I must, but working nights would kill me. Is it difficult to find good jobs that are day shift?

[fergus51]

It can be challenging, but it is possible. I know several nurses who chose to work casual instead of full time so that they could only work days. Fortunately a lot of hospitals don't require staff to rotate shifts, so if you get hired on days that's all you'd have to work. If your job requires you to rotate, you might be able to find another nurse who only likes nights and cover eachother's shifts.

[SmilingBluEyes]

In OB espeically, to "break in" you almost HAVE to work nights. That is often true of hospital nursing in general. IF you want to avoid shiftwork, you may have to work outside the hospital arena (dr office, school nursing, research, etc.) or else get lucky. Day jobs are available around here in chronically short areas such as ER, ICU and Med-Surg. But in OB fuggedaboudit. You almost without exception have to do your time on nights first.

[jaxnRN]

Unfortunately, to get into OB you always have to start at night. There are a lot of nurses who will NEVER leave the night shift so when a position comes open for day, they usually select from within and then if you take the days, your night job will be the one open to others. That, at least, is how it works at our hospital.

[at your cervix]

It is really hard to say. A hospital where I used to work had a very hard time staffing days-everyone wanted nights! So I guess that if you happen to be lucky enough to find a weird hospital like that one then you could work days! For what it is worth- I have worked both nights and days and although I get more sleep and feel better working days, I have found that work is more fun at night!