8 frustrating things about working the night shift for nurses 1. Comments from day shift: “What do you do? The patients are all asleep.” “You can’t be that busy.” If they knew just how many times we have caught and fixed their mistakes! –Kimberly Standifer 2. Fake “days off.” Working a night shift and having the next day off is technically not a day off. –Kelly Caniglia 3. Meetings and other important “mandatory” stuff is not scheduled conveniently at all. Or getting called at 1 PM by your manager, who seems surprised that you’re sleeping!! –Jessie Disbrow Miller 4. The fact that most of the rest of the world is on a “daytime” schedule! It would be nice to be able to go to the bank or post office at 2 AM when you are still awake on your nights off. –Melanie Kitchings Pniewski 5. Hands down, it’s the day shift leaving stuff for us to do, assuming that we have all kinds of spare time. I actually spend my first 4-5 hours cleaning up messes that the day shift leaves for me. I do not sit on my butt all night! –Jennifer Fox 6. Ithink #1 is SLEEP. Irregular sleep cycles really mess with the mind and body. It can be a serious health issue. –Anna Mashburn 7. When the staff is treated to a special meal or function, night shift is normally excluded. We also are not included in things like benefits and educational fairs. –Marcie Duvall McFarland 8. There are many benefits to working nights…teamwork and collaboration, creative thinking due to lack of resources, shift diff, not having to put up with most administrators walking the halls, etc. What I don’t think I will ever adjust to, however, is the “transition day” between working and trying to go back to daytime living. It’s like a 24-hour hangover! And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve given the “Noon is the middle of the night to Mommy, so please be a little more quiet” speech to my kids…it gets old! –Deanne Stone Geringer [Broken External Image]:http://www.labwear.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/07/sleepy-nurse.jpg Source
