Night shift nurses downloads11/8/2023 ![]() Simple sugars from fruits like bananas and apples will increase your glucose levels. If you’re feeling slight fatigue during your night shift, consider packing a meal and snacks that naturally fuel your body. When ingested on an empty stomach, the side effects include: nausea, dizziness, anxiety, headaches, and more that hinders your cognitive abilities. Common health problems that develop from ingesting large amounts of caffeine include: raised blood pressure, acid reflux, heartburn, and later evolve to dependency. It’s a quick solution, but can have long-term effects on our body. Oftentimes, we rely on caffeine to give us that boost in energy to get through a shift. The 7 hours you’re awake before your 11:00 PM shift will inevitably take up a majority of your energy and cognitive abilities and accumulating 15 hours of continuous awake time far exceeds the human body’s abilities to perform consistently and efficiently. In comparison, if we take the same schedule from above, you can sleep from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM. When you’re rested, you are more likely to stay alert while working. This sleeping pattern ensures that you still get a minimum of eight hours of rest, especially a significant amount before your 8-hour night shift. Around 5:00PM, take another four hour nap and wake up in time to get ready for your shift. Nap from 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM, then wake up to eat, exercise, run errands, and perform any home responsibilities. Let’s say your shift is complete by 7:00 AM. Instead of coming home from a night shift and immediately going to sleep, try a sandwich technique where you nap twice a day, but stay awake for a period of time in between. Studies have shown that waking up close to the beginning of the shift time will help you feel more alert. Working the night shift means you can join school activities like becoming a parent volunteer in the classroom or chaperoning the school field trip. When one spouse works 9-5 and the other works the night shift, there will be at least one parent present to care for the children. A typical 9-5 schedule often requires extra assistance from nannies or grandparents. There’s a lot of extracurricular classes to join in the daytime for dancing, music, cooking, art, working out and so much more.įor parents raising children, alternating work shifts ensure that you’re both spending time with the kids. If you’re completing residency in a new city, take the time to explore all that it has to offer like a city tour or biking around the town to hang with the locals. Working the night shift means you’re able to do things in the daytime that typical 9-5 workers can’t. Regain some normalcy in your down time with hobbies that you enjoy. We know that working in a hospital can be chaotic and unpredictable. Spend Your Down Time With Daytime Activities This will be helpful, especially if you intend on establishing a routine around them. Talk to your nurse manager to see if you can be scheduled for night shifts consistently. ![]() The National Sleep Foundation encourages night shift workers to set a routine wake up and sleep time. This helps them avoid the “night shift hangover” where a day shift can interrupt their scheduled night shifts.įinding the best time to rest will be difficult, but you know your body best. To minimize the amount of sleep lost, experienced nurses will schedule night shifts back to back. It’ll take some time to train your body to develop a sleep pattern custom to your routines at home and work. The human body is hard-wired to be active in the daytime and will produce melatonin as soon as it starts to get dark outside. From sleeping to eating habits, here are a few helpful nursing tips to take on the night shift and maintain a positive mindset. ![]() There are several factors that can affect your performance. In order to successfully work a night shift, RNs should adapt their mind and body to the new working conditions. Likewise, the advantages of working the nightshift are often overlooked as well. The role and responsibilities are the same as a daytime nurse although, the night shift does present a set of unique challenges. Typically, the night shift is from 11:00 PM to 7:00 AM, but ultimately differs depending on the health care facility. Some nurses find that it perfectly fits their daily routine and prefer to work only evenings and nights. With a small population working these odd hours, it’s no surprise that there’s a lot of unknown advantages to working the night shift. About 4% of America’s workforce has the night shift (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2018). However, after getting through your first night shift, you’ll realize that it’s not as intimidating. The idea of disrupting your already lack of sleep is dreadful. As a nursing student, there’s a myriad of emotions running through your mind as you start your first night shift, sometimes referred to as the third shift.
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