Throughout their shifts, night nurses try to ensure their patients get as much sleep as possible, because rest is important for their recovery.
This means during their quiet times, night shift nurses are often kept busy helping other nurses. Night shifts generally have fewer nurses and other staff working than other shifts, so nurses working at night depend on their nursing team for support. Night shift nurses often spend much of their work time responding to calls from patients, keeping them clean, monitoring and changing IV lines, and performing similar nursing duties. In other departments, activity may appear to decline at night because there are fewer staff and visitors around, but night shift nurses are kept as busy as their counterparts on other shifts. In many hospital departments, such as intensive care units and emergency rooms, the activity level doesn’t change from shift to shift. A Night in the Life of a Night Shift Nurse Here is a look at some of the unique challenges that night shift nurses must overcome, as well as ways to retain nurses who work the night shift. For example, another disadvantage for night shift nurses is they may lack access to resources, such as a full-service cafeteria and other support operations. Having to deal with tired patients trying to sleep in an unfamiliar bed is only one of the ways the shift is tougher than day and afternoon (swing) shifts. As Eire writes, “People don’t stop being sick just because it’s nighttime.” Of course, nurses working the day shift have tremendous workloads, so they sometimes leave what Eire refers to as “less desirable” tasks for the night shift. In fact, night shifts are just as busy as day shifts.
The most common misconception about night shift nurses, according to Grace Eire on the Little Things blog, is that all is calm at night. Section One: The Role of a Night Shift Nurse As a great number of happy night shift nurses can attest, it is possible to enjoy time with family and personal pursuits while working the night shift. The resources and tips in this guide are intended to keep night shift nurses healthy, rested, and ready to provide their patients with high-quality care. And as any nurse who has worked the night shift will tell you, patients are as likely to be awake through most of the shift as they are to sleep through it.Ĭounterbalancing the challenges faced by night shift nurses are the many benefits that come with working through the night, such as spending days pursuing outside interests or advancing nursing careers. Yet few nurses face more challenges and make more sacrifices for their profession than those assigned to the night shift.įor example, patients are likely to feel vulnerable at night: they are in unfamiliar surroundings, they are trying to sleep in a strange bed, they are usually in discomfort if not outright pain. It’s understandable that the work of night shift nurses goes unrecognized, because they are caring for patients while the rest of the world sleeps. Fewer roles in healthcare are as misunderstood as that of night shift nurses, whose invaluable contributions to the well-being of patients and the success of nursing teams are consistently under-appreciated.
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