One of the big differences between working nights and days is sleep pattern. I don't know what other night shifters did, but I would get out of work at 7 a.m., go home, eat, and go right to bed. This allows me to get up whenever I want, and rarely do I ever set my alarm, nor sacrifice sleep. I just kind of get up when I get up.
Working days is quite the opposite. After I work a day I get out of work at 7 p.m. and when I get home my kids are up to greet me. So I spend the evening playing with them, and then prepare them for bed. So obviously I'm not going to sleep right away. This kind of forces me to have to set the alarm clock, and perhaps get up before I'm ready. Which can make for a long day.
However, at least when I'm allowed to sleep during the night, when the sun is down and it's cooler outside (especially in the summer months), I sleep better. When I worked nights, it was often hard to sleep well during the day. So I'd often be extra tired at night.
Now that I work days I like to get up really early. I'm not the kind of person who likes to let the alarm wake him up, hit snooze 30 times, and then rush to work barely making it there. That's not me at all.
I like to get up at least an hour and a half before I have to go in, have a cup of coffee, eat breakfast, smoke a cigarette or two (just kidding), prepare food for the day, and play on the Internet for a while. It's kind of an easy pace morning, and then I go to work early enough so I have time to sort of ease into it.
Today I got up at 4:00 a.m., which some may consider a bit early since I don't need to be to work until 7 a.m., yet it was nice to be able to spend time doing this, and not have to rush. Yes I'm tired, yet slept pretty well. I sacrificed an hour of sleep, yet to me it was worth it.
How do you guys prepare for your long shifts?
Showing posts with label working days. Show all posts
Showing posts with label working days. Show all posts
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Saturday, June 19, 2010
A report about day shift
So after working 10 years as a night shift RT I've finally graduated to days. I've now been on days for the past four months. It was actually a tough transition at first. It was hard getting used to all the people being around, and the LIGHT.
Yes, that's right, after working the graveyard shift pretty much on a regular basis since 1991, I feared the sunlight might make me melt. However, that has yet to happen. I'm still in tact.
When I started this blog I had the following in my banner: " I work solo nights and prefer it that way. The dragons are sleeping at night, if you know what I mean."
Ah, the dragons. You know who they are. They are the bosses who scream every time a dot isn't crossed or t dotted. They are the ones who are more concerned over paper work than saving lives. They, as you may know, are perhaps former RTs and RNs who have morphed into intractable dragons.
So now I work with the dragons. I wasn't sure how this would go, but I've learned as long as you say what they want to hear you're all right. So long as you understand their way of thinking, you're all right. You can question them, but you better watch your step or.... ROOOOAAAAAAAAAR!!!!!
Trust me when I say this, when you work for a small hospital, and every dime counts, the roar is a lot louder than it is at bigger hospitals, or hospitals that are merged. I know this because I work with RTs and RNs who have also worked at large hospitals.
So, now here's the big difference I've observed working days versus working nights. On nights, I grumbled and griped about doing useless breathing treatments. On nights, however, I worked by myself, and I had to do all the useless breathing treatments on the floors AND all the useless breathing treatments and EKGs and Holters and etc. in the emergency room and everywhere else in the hospital.
Thus, if I didn't have to do all the useless treatments, I might have a good night. So I was more likely to complain. Although, be it said, my complaining more or less came out in the form of humor as you can tell from this blog. "Allbetterol Anyone?"
On nights, when there are very few procedures, I didn't have anything to do and could just sit around and blog or gossip or whatever I wanted to do. And there were no bosses to tell me what to do. And, no matter how slow it got, I never lost hours because nobody wants to work nights.
On days things are different. On days, if it's slow, one of us goes home. So, since it's slow around here quite a bit lately, I've lost at least 8 hours a week. That's not good. So, I find that when I work days I actually want useless treatments.
I'll repeat that last sentence: On days I find that I actually get happy when a doctor orders a useless treatment. I want them because it means I will not have to be sent home. I will not lose hours.
On nights I didn't care how many patients there were. On days I want at least 10 patients so both of us day RTs can get our hours.
Other than that, all the expected changes have occurred in me. Yep, I'm not so exhausted every day. After about 1.5 months of being on days I started to feel like a different person. "Gosh," I said to my wife one morning, "Is this what it's like to feel normal."
So, now that I work days, I'm less grumpy (to be expected), am more wide awake, get much more sleep, don't complain (as much) about useless treatments (just tolerate them), have learned that the dragons are tolerable to work with (so long as you say and do what they want), and the light doesn't make me melt.
Yes, that's right, after working the graveyard shift pretty much on a regular basis since 1991, I feared the sunlight might make me melt. However, that has yet to happen. I'm still in tact.
When I started this blog I had the following in my banner: " I work solo nights and prefer it that way. The dragons are sleeping at night, if you know what I mean."
Ah, the dragons. You know who they are. They are the bosses who scream every time a dot isn't crossed or t dotted. They are the ones who are more concerned over paper work than saving lives. They, as you may know, are perhaps former RTs and RNs who have morphed into intractable dragons.
So now I work with the dragons. I wasn't sure how this would go, but I've learned as long as you say what they want to hear you're all right. So long as you understand their way of thinking, you're all right. You can question them, but you better watch your step or.... ROOOOAAAAAAAAAR!!!!!
Trust me when I say this, when you work for a small hospital, and every dime counts, the roar is a lot louder than it is at bigger hospitals, or hospitals that are merged. I know this because I work with RTs and RNs who have also worked at large hospitals.
So, now here's the big difference I've observed working days versus working nights. On nights, I grumbled and griped about doing useless breathing treatments. On nights, however, I worked by myself, and I had to do all the useless breathing treatments on the floors AND all the useless breathing treatments and EKGs and Holters and etc. in the emergency room and everywhere else in the hospital.
Thus, if I didn't have to do all the useless treatments, I might have a good night. So I was more likely to complain. Although, be it said, my complaining more or less came out in the form of humor as you can tell from this blog. "Allbetterol Anyone?"
On nights, when there are very few procedures, I didn't have anything to do and could just sit around and blog or gossip or whatever I wanted to do. And there were no bosses to tell me what to do. And, no matter how slow it got, I never lost hours because nobody wants to work nights.
On days things are different. On days, if it's slow, one of us goes home. So, since it's slow around here quite a bit lately, I've lost at least 8 hours a week. That's not good. So, I find that when I work days I actually want useless treatments.
I'll repeat that last sentence: On days I find that I actually get happy when a doctor orders a useless treatment. I want them because it means I will not have to be sent home. I will not lose hours.
On nights I didn't care how many patients there were. On days I want at least 10 patients so both of us day RTs can get our hours.
Other than that, all the expected changes have occurred in me. Yep, I'm not so exhausted every day. After about 1.5 months of being on days I started to feel like a different person. "Gosh," I said to my wife one morning, "Is this what it's like to feel normal."
So, now that I work days, I'm less grumpy (to be expected), am more wide awake, get much more sleep, don't complain (as much) about useless treatments (just tolerate them), have learned that the dragons are tolerable to work with (so long as you say and do what they want), and the light doesn't make me melt.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
So far I do not like days
Well, I worked my first day shift today, and by all means, I'm not so much impressed. The people I would say are fine, yet the procedures I was forced to endure were of the sorts that could easily be done by a high schooler.
In the four hours I've worked so far I've done 11 EKGs. Thus, in general, I am so far an expensive version of an EKG tech. Not much for using the good old brain. Not much for doing some real work. Just in the past four hours alone I've done 11 EKGs and five not-indicated breathing treatments.
I suppose there will have to be a transition period of which I'll have to get used to days. Perhaps I'm still sleep deprived. Crap. The beeper just went off, and the ER wants me to do another EKG. This is not for me. If this is what working days is all about, I'm going to be back on nights in the next week or so.
Well, just got paged that another repeat EKG will have to be done at 8:00 p.m. This sucks. I guess I've worked night shift so long I got used to the easy life, and have been too far removed from the high school work I no longer like doing it.
In the four hours I've worked so far I've done 11 EKGs. Thus, in general, I am so far an expensive version of an EKG tech. Not much for using the good old brain. Not much for doing some real work. Just in the past four hours alone I've done 11 EKGs and five not-indicated breathing treatments.
I suppose there will have to be a transition period of which I'll have to get used to days. Perhaps I'm still sleep deprived. Crap. The beeper just went off, and the ER wants me to do another EKG. This is not for me. If this is what working days is all about, I'm going to be back on nights in the next week or so.
Well, just got paged that another repeat EKG will have to be done at 8:00 p.m. This sucks. I guess I've worked night shift so long I got used to the easy life, and have been too far removed from the high school work I no longer like doing it.
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