Night Shift Nursing vs Day Shift

Night Shift vs Day Shift Nursing Part 1

Welcome back to The Nursing School Week by Week Podcast. I’m your host, Melanie, and today I want to talk about the differences between day shift vs night shift for nurses. Maybe you’re on the fence, you don’t know if you want to work day shift or night shift when you graduate, so I wanna go over kinda the pros and cons of each to help you make your decision.

Now I have worked both day shift and night shift on a med surg unit and in the emergency room, so I feel like I can talk to the pros and cons of both.

Alright, so first up, I definitely have to mention that if you’re in it to make more money, then the night shift is the obvious way to go. Because you’re gonna get that night shift differential, which is usually, some places do it differently. Some places do it like just a set amount per hour more, like 7 dollars more per hour if you’re working on the night shift; then other places will give like 1.25 times your base hourly rate. But either way, you’re gonna make more on the night shift. And when I calculated it out, it was basically a car payment every month. So about $600 more per month than what I would have made on the day shift. So that’s pretty significant. And if you’re working night shift on the weekend, then you’re gonna get even more cause you’re gonna get that weekend shift differential in addition to the night shift differential. So that’s what I tried to schedule myself when I was working nights. I would try to make it on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night so I would get both of those differentials to maximize the pay. Cause if you’re there, putting in the time, you might as well get paid the most you can possibly make.

Alright, another difference between day shift and night shift, is that, and this can be seen as either a pro or a con, depending on how you look at it, but during the day shift there are more doctors around, more physical therapists, more occupational therapists, more social workers around, and more management around. So this can be a good thing, because if an emergency situation arises or if you need to change verify an order, then the doctor is just a chat or a phone call away. Or if the patient starts going downhill fast, you can reach out to the doctor easily and you don’t feel like, you know, you have to wait until it’s an absolute emergency because you don’t wanna wake up the doctor in the middle of the night, and what if they get mad at you and yell at you? You’re not as worried about that because the doctors are already there working anyway. So that is a good thing, but it can also be a bad thing; because there’s something nice about it, I mean that’s one reason why the night shift is more quiet and less hectic because there are just a lot fewer people there; a lot less doctors putting in orders, changing orders, wanting procedures done right then and there. It can be a little frustrating on day shift when you have your list of things you need to do with and for the patient, maybe you are on your way to a patient’s room to get something done with them that you need to get done as the nurse, but right before you enter, you see the physical therapist go into the room, or the nutritionist, or the social worker, so you think, “Oh, man, well, I guess I’ll wait and let them do their thing and I’ll circle back around and try to do my thing later.” So that can be frustrating, because it can mess up the schedule you’ve put together. Of course, we know as nurses, we can do our best at the beginning of our shift to plan out what we think our shift is going to look like, but the name of the game is flexibility. It’s always going to change. Very rarely will you have a shift that goes according to plan. But it’s a lot less likely if you’re on day shift because you have a lot more things that are out of your control. A lot more staff that need to do things with your patient. It’s not just you. 

Also, it can definitely be overwhelming for a new grad nurse to work on day shift. To graduate nursing school and go straight to day shift. Because there are a lot more procedures that are done on day shift; just a lot more needs to get done. So it can be very hectic and difficult for a seasoned nurse, let alone a new grad nurse who’s just trying to get their bearings and, you know, barely knows how to find things in the supply room. So a lot of units, especially the ICU will put their new grad nurses on night shift, even if they’re planning on switching them over to day shift, they’ll put you on night shift during your orientation training period, just because it’s less hectic and it’s a little easier to get your bearings and feel competent in what you’re doing before you go into the big bad world of day shift. But not everyone can do that. With my kid’s schedule, it just worked out better for me to graduate nursing school and then go right on into day shift. But I had also been a nurses aide on day shift on that same unit for a while during nursing school, so that helped, but it still was definitely hectic for me. And I’m gonna do an episode soon on how to survive your first 6 months to a year as a new grad nurse. How to deal with the anxiety, and little tips and tricks that I have for you guys. 

Alright, so another thing that I mentioned is that management is also around during day shift. And that can be good or bad. As a new grad nurse, it would be someone else to ask when you have an issue or a question, but bad because it’s also, you know, that’s your boss, and sometimes you don’t want your boss right there to witness all of your mistakes and questions. Yeah, there are no dumb questions, we’ve all heard that. But how many times have you asked a question, then you go home, and you’re just like, “oh man, that was kind of a dumb question.” So, sometimes is can be better to not feel like you have management there breathing down your neck and micromanaging everything that you’re doing.

Alright, another sort of con for day shift is that you are a lot less likely to actually get the breaks that you’re supposed to have, and the lunch break that you’re supposed to have on day shift. Just because it’s so busy. And I hate saying that because I truly hate that the culture of nursing is such that you’re almost expected to be ok with not having breaks. Like that really bothers me. I feel like nurses should expect to have their break, and they should demand to have the breaks that they deserve and that they need. We need a 30 minute lunch break. We need 2 15 minute breaks apart from the 30 minute lunch break. At a minimum if you’re working a 12 hour shift. And it really bothers me that the culture is what it is that we’re just supposed to sacrifice over and over again if our patients need something. Anyway, don’t even get me started. I could go on and on about how hospitals need to hire more nurses and that there’s not truly a nursing shortage, that there are plenty of nurses, but the hospitals don’t want to pay for them. Anyway, I’m going on a tangent. But, it is true that you are less likely to get the breaks that you deserve and need if you’re working on day shift. And even if you do find yourself getting a break, you’re more likely to get interrupted during your lunch break by call after call from PT, from OT, from doctors, with questions about your patient. Where as, when I was working night shift, I usually had an uninterrupted lunch break plus two 15 minute regular breaks. Which was very nice. 

Alright, now a pretty obvious con to working night shift is that it’s much more difficult to keep a healthy sleep schedule if you’re wokring night shift. Just because our bodies are meant to sleep during the night when it’s dark and to be awake and up and outside when it’s light outside, when the sun is out. It’s not natural for our bodies to be up all night and trying to sleep during the day. And there are things that you can do to mitigate the effects of working at night, like getting black out curtains and wearing uv blocking glasses right when you get off your shift when you’re going out to your car and driving home, so that when you get home, you’re still sleepy. But at the end of the day, I mean study after study has shown that people working on night shift are more prone to gaining weight, more likely to get cancer, they have an increased risk for diabetes, heart disease, and stroke. So those are some pretty serious consequences for working the night shift over a prolonged period. And something that you need to seriously take into account. But sometimes it just works better for your schedule, if you have kids and you don’t have a lot of help, you don’t have someone to watch them when they get out of school, then there may not be another option, and you may have to work the night shift. At least for a period of time before you can get onto day shift. Or, like I said, a lot of new grad nurses will work the night shift for a year or so before they move to day shift. 

One really nice thing about night shift is that there’s a stronger bond among night shift workers on a unit than with day shift. I don’t know if it’s because there are fewer people to really on in an emergency situation, so you know you have to be nice and have a good relationship with your coworkers on night shift because you’re gonna need them at some point. You want them to have your back just like you’re gonna have their back if something goes down. And also there are fewer people to talk to during night shift and ther’es more time to visit with your coworkers cause there’s just a little bit less to do. A lot of your patients are gonna be sleeping so you’ll spend more time chatting it up with your coworkers while you’re all trying to stay awake. So definitely a stronger bond among night shift workers than day shift workers. I also found that there were fewer travel nurses on night shift than day shift. Anytime you have more travelers, there’s gonna be less of that sense of comradery just because they’re not there for a long period, they’re just passing through. 

One definite pro for day shift is that you’re gonna get to practice your skills more just because there are a lot more procedures done on day shift than on night shift. A lot more catheters placed on day shift, a lot more NG tubes, a lot more picc lines placed. A lot of procedures are done on day shift, not so much on night shift cause the doctors aren’t there on night shift, so they’re not ordering those things to be done, and because the patients are sleeping. So if that’s your priority, to get a good and competent in your skills as possible as quickly as possible after graduating, then you might want to do day shift. I know when I switched from day shift to night shift I felt very comfortable doing those skills, the few times that I had to on night shift, whereas some of my other coworkers were kind of like, “Ahhh” you know, they were a little fuzzy on how to do some of those procedures just because they hadn’t done them in so long. So that was kind of cool, as a relatively new nurse being able to step in and say, “I got this.” Because I had done it already so many times on day shift. 

One con for working the night shift, is, going back to your lunch break and your breaks, you are more likely to get your breaks on night shift, but at most places, you have to bring your own lunch because is going to be closed at night. So that’s a con. But, I mean, for me, it didn’t really matter, because working dayshift, I didn’t feel like I had time on my 30 minute rushed break that was constantly interrupted, I didn’t feel like I had time to go to the cafeteria to get something for lunch anyway. So, night shift, you have time, but it’s closed. So either way, I was bringing my lunch, whether I was working day shift or night shift.

But it is kinda nice on day shift, sometimes you would have time to pop down and get a coffee at least, but you can’t do that on night shift cause the coffee shop is closed. And who needs the coffee more than the night shift, right? You gotta drink the nasty coffee that’s half-burned in the coffee pot that was brewed at 6am that morning. 

Alright, another pro for night shift is that it typically takes less time to get to and from work when you’re working night shift. Cause you’re driving in at 6:30 at night, which is just after the rush-hour of all the people who are getting out of work, so you miss traffic going into work, and then when you get off of work, it’s 7:30-8, and you’re driving the opposite way from everyone else, so you’re a lot less likely to hit traffic, and your commute time is going to be shorter. And also, I found this to be a huge benefit, now not all hospitals charge their employees for parking, but the one that I worked at did, but on the weekends and for night shift, you got to park for free, and that was a big benefit cause it was actually pretty pricey to pay for parking if you did have to pay. So that’s a definite pro for night shift. Free parking and a shorter commute time.

One con on day shift that I want to go back to is, I mean, I mentioned that there are a lot more staff there in the hospital during day shift, and also the patients are awake. So, with that is going to come a much higher noise level. You’ve got more phone calls, more call lights going off, just because the patients are awake, and if you’ve got 5-6 patients per shift, there’s always the one, at least one that’s constantly hitting their call light for something. So that noise level can be very stressful. For myself, I am an introvert, and I think that makes it especially difficult to stay focused on what I need to do in the moment when I feel like I’m being constantly interrupted and there’s always some alarm going off or someone calling. I’ll be in one patient’s room, trying to give them meds, and my phone rings, so I have to take off my gloves, answer the phone, maybe write down something that I want to remember that I have to do, and then put the phone away, put on gloves, remember what I was doing with the patient, and that can be very distracting. It can feel like it’s taking you three times longer to do something that you would normally do without all of the distractions. And also so many times, I would go home, and it’s almost like you start hearing these phantom alarms and these phantom phone calls that aren’t really there, but you’ve heard them all day for three days straight and it’s hard for me anyway to function in that over stimulating environment. It can be very stressful. If you have any kind of anxiety, that can be difficult. And a lot of nurses just learn to tune out most of those alarms, and I can totally see why cause they’re always going off, but we have those alarms for a reason, and it’s kind of scary to think about, you know, your brain’s just tuning them out so you don’t even hear them anymore.

Alright you guys, I am going to stop there for today, cause I live in Florida, and there’s a hurricane coming! It’s supposed to hit us sometime tonight, and I still have a ton to do to prepare. But I still have a lot more that I want to share with you on the pros and cons of night shift vs day shift nursing. So, I will continue this in a couple days. You guys stay safe, and I will talk to you again soon!

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