Night Owl

Night shift. It is for the birds. It sucks. I am thankful to be on the same floor as a nurse as I worked on as a tech... I love the actual job itself, I love my bosses, I love the staff I work with... The nurses I worked with as a tech and work with now as a nurse, were some of the most supportive people and my biggest fans while I was in nursing school.

With that said, it doesn't make up for the shift. It's rough. It is basically 11pm to 7am. Granted it is a $4 raise a night and on the weekends a $6.75 raise... To me the money is not worth it. I did get offered a evening shift spot, which is the shift I started on... I am very thankful for this, it will be nice to go back to those hours. Evening shift hours are not too early and not too late. I can sleep in, go the the gym and then go to work...AND then be home at an acceptable hour.

Nights is hard for many reasons. You try to sleep during the day while everyone is awake. I get more missed calls/ texts during the day because I am sleeping, I get woken up by people mowing their lawns, I get woken up by the sunshine and the increased warmth of the day...

The next thing that is rough is when I have a night off...I get off at 7am on my night off, workout, then end up sleeping all day and all night just to catch up. Technically the first night off I have of my weekend I get is consumed with catching up on sleep. The days I try to do something on my first night off...ends up a mess. I probably don't sleep until 2pm then wake up around 6pm or so to get ready. My eyes are red and look like they are about to pop out of my head, I get grumpy and short tempered and by the end of my outing all I want to do is eat and go back to bed...Just like a damn kid. It's hard.

The next thing that is even worse is waking patients up at 11pm to do an assessment/ take vitals/ check on their well being. I very frequently get pretty shitty responses from patients like they are expecting to be treated like they are the damn Hilton. No you can not hang a no disturb sign on your door and come out whenever you feel like for that damn continental breakfast. This is a hospital. It is my job to check on you.

The patients that kill me are the ones that had an "elective" surgery. This means they chose to come in and get a knee replacement...or whatever...and still get pissed off when you wake them up to check on them. I'm just like the next person, I hate to be woken up, but if it was a nurse coming to give me pain medication and check on my well being... I just might be a little more nice. Nope, people are rude. One of the last nights I worked a grumpy middle aged lady asked me, "are you going to be doing these tests all night?" I let her know I would check on her, you know to make sure she was still breathing, but that after my assessment I would let her rest.

I frequently get annoyed and short with these "rude" types of patients...I do my thing and bounce asap. If they are nice I usually stick around to go out of my way for them...I know that probably isn't right, but it's the truth. Why would I want to stick around if you are obnoxious. I don't. I do my thing and jet. Lately I decided I need to not take this type of grumpy patient to heart. It's not me, it's the patient and it's the time of night. Later I thought to myself when that lady asked if I would be in all night...I should have said "Yep, every hour on the hour"...Bitch. Lol okay, maybe not the bitch part, but the rest of the statement, yes.

I love the other types of people that offer to turn on the light, ask me how my night is going and tell me, "I understand you are just doing your job". Evening shift will work out way better for me. I not only get to be around while people are awake, but I get to actually spend more time with the patients. I've learned I actually do enjoy the human interaction and I especially thrive off patient teaching and dressing changes. If the patient is agreeable and well mannered I really enjoy spending the time in the room as a nurse and doing my job. Imagine that.