Days

So at our charge nurse meeting in January we all decided it would be beneficial if all the night shift charge nurses worked 2 day shifts and vice-versa. We are having some problems figuring out how we can use our money to pay for employees on the floor. Recently we changed night shift staffing to have 4:1 patient to nurse ratios instead of 3:1. If you can to math that is more than a 30% increase in our patient load for the nurses. In exchange we got a secretary for the shift and another tech the second half of the shift. Anyway we are trying to decide if this is better than the old model (which by the way, I don't believe it is) and thought that it would be helpful for everyone to walk in the shoes of the other shift.

So the last two days I was a little day-shift lady again! I can't believe how fun it was. mostly because I had freaking amazing patients, but still. It was nice to not have to fight the sleepy bug. It was nice to have the doctors come around so I knew what was going on. It was nice that I wasn't trying to make my patient's sleep better, resulting in boredom for me. I got to do a lot more teaching, helping, and coordinating. And I had a lot of people that seemed happy to see me because it's been over a year since I've worked days! That part was nice. Always nice to be noticed.

It was also nice to take part in some treat getting. Day shift gets a lot more treats than night shift does. On Thursday I ate a delicious peanut butter bar, and today I got a Krispy Kreme donut (which, by the way, I LOVE). I felt a bit guilty taking part, knowing that night shift gets the shaft.

However, when I got home at 7:30 to find out that I had ruined Todd's plans for the evening by being so late, he just said "this is why you don't work days." And I felt bad. Even if it weren't for the extra money I get from the night time differential, I do get to go to church every week and only one evening is ruined at a time instead of two. (I have to go to bed early the night before and get home late the night of.)

So the moral of the story is that even thought I like being at work a lot more during the day, my home life is more important and it's better for me to work nights. However, this was a fun refresher. Maybe I'll try to pick up another day shift every now and then.