Nocturnal
Tonight, in a few hours, I work a night shift for the first time in my life. (The closest I've come is when I worked in a mall movie theater a couple summers when I was in college. Fridays and Saturdays, the last shows ended around 1 am, and then my friends--fellow Crossgates Cinema 12 employees--and I would hang out, talking and laughing and maybe drinking, and roaming around in the benign, expansive suburban summer nights.)
7 PM to 7 AM. I'm a little intimidated by the thought of it. I do it tonight and tomorrow night--tomorrow night being even a bit scarier, because of course a person can do anything for one night, if there's all the time in the world to recover afterward. But if I don't manage to sleep a lot during the day tomorrow, I'm kind of screwed for my second night.
In a community hospital, I guess there would actually be more to be worried about. All the doctors go home, and it really is the nurses' show. If something goes terribly wrong with a patient, you can page, but the MD is answering from his/her own little bed, and it's up to you (well, and of course the other nurses who actually know what they're doing) to deal with it until such a time as help arrives. In a teaching hospital, though, there are always a few covering interns and residents floating blearily around, maybe snatching naps in the call room but not more than a minute or two away.
So it's not that. It's not really rationally justifiable, I don't think. Certainly part of it is, what if I wimp out? But there's also this weird feeling, like night is for sleeping, and working nights is breaking some kind of taboo. And what if everything's different at night? What if it's strange and quiet and creepy? It makes no sense. I can picture what it will be like, really, and if anything, it will be a little bit boring, and also a drag because the cafeteria's closed. But beyond that, it will be awfully ordinary. But there's this dumb, prickly, lingering sense that I'm going to be encountering the unknown.
Well, and I kind of am, because I have a preceptor tonight I've never met before. People say she's nice. I don't know. Kind of everybody's nice. Well. Some people are a little snarkier and have more of an edge than others, but the culture is awfully strong on the unit that all the nurses are nice to each other. It's really striking.
I also am not sure what happens on nights. I think each nurse has more patients, because there's less to do. Substantially less than half of medications are given at night, and there's not changing the bed and getting the patient washed up and stuff. Dressing changes and line changes usually happen on days. Patients mostly don't go down for tests or anything. If they're lucky, they're actually sleeping through much of the night. There's a little flurry of medications and vital signs and stuff around 8 pm, and maybe a few bed-time-ish things around 10 pm, then maybe some IV antibiotics to hang at midnight. Then at 4 am the poor dears get their morning labs drawn, and occasionally you'll hang an IV medication then too. I don't know. I have trouble picturing the rhythm of it. But, well, my ignorance will not now last much longer.
I'll let you know how it goes. Meanwhile, I am off to take the suggested pre-shift afternoon nap to help gird my gravid loins.
7 PM to 7 AM. I'm a little intimidated by the thought of it. I do it tonight and tomorrow night--tomorrow night being even a bit scarier, because of course a person can do anything for one night, if there's all the time in the world to recover afterward. But if I don't manage to sleep a lot during the day tomorrow, I'm kind of screwed for my second night.
In a community hospital, I guess there would actually be more to be worried about. All the doctors go home, and it really is the nurses' show. If something goes terribly wrong with a patient, you can page, but the MD is answering from his/her own little bed, and it's up to you (well, and of course the other nurses who actually know what they're doing) to deal with it until such a time as help arrives. In a teaching hospital, though, there are always a few covering interns and residents floating blearily around, maybe snatching naps in the call room but not more than a minute or two away.
So it's not that. It's not really rationally justifiable, I don't think. Certainly part of it is, what if I wimp out? But there's also this weird feeling, like night is for sleeping, and working nights is breaking some kind of taboo. And what if everything's different at night? What if it's strange and quiet and creepy? It makes no sense. I can picture what it will be like, really, and if anything, it will be a little bit boring, and also a drag because the cafeteria's closed. But beyond that, it will be awfully ordinary. But there's this dumb, prickly, lingering sense that I'm going to be encountering the unknown.
Well, and I kind of am, because I have a preceptor tonight I've never met before. People say she's nice. I don't know. Kind of everybody's nice. Well. Some people are a little snarkier and have more of an edge than others, but the culture is awfully strong on the unit that all the nurses are nice to each other. It's really striking.
I also am not sure what happens on nights. I think each nurse has more patients, because there's less to do. Substantially less than half of medications are given at night, and there's not changing the bed and getting the patient washed up and stuff. Dressing changes and line changes usually happen on days. Patients mostly don't go down for tests or anything. If they're lucky, they're actually sleeping through much of the night. There's a little flurry of medications and vital signs and stuff around 8 pm, and maybe a few bed-time-ish things around 10 pm, then maybe some IV antibiotics to hang at midnight. Then at 4 am the poor dears get their morning labs drawn, and occasionally you'll hang an IV medication then too. I don't know. I have trouble picturing the rhythm of it. But, well, my ignorance will not now last much longer.
I'll let you know how it goes. Meanwhile, I am off to take the suggested pre-shift afternoon nap to help gird my gravid loins.
posted by Rosie Bonner at 2:12 PM
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