Nurse Schedule Rant.
This is stupid but I just wanted to rant. I’m a recent nurse graduate and I’ve been working for a couple of months now and I’m just saying that the schedule is seriously something to get used to. Like I had never worked 12 hours before I got into healthcare let alone being on nights, and it is a huge adjustment that they don’t prepare you well enough for in school. I really think that there needs to be a complete change of the nursing schedule requirements because I feel like that’s a big reason why we get burnt out so quick. Everybody is not made for 12’s let alone a mandatory 3 a week. This adjustment leads us to struggle for SO long after starting our career and it sucks. I mean I’m fairly new and I’m definitely struggling.Idk if it’s the path I chose (not the floor I wanna be on) or the fact that I still feel like the 12 hour shifts and the promise of work life balance is not truly that great. I feel tired and miserable most days regardless if I’m off for a bit or not. I was talking to an older nurse and she said that nursing shifts used to be only 8 hours and I was shocked. How?! I’m not sure how that would’ve worked, but that made me wonder. Did anyone ever think about making it standard for our schedules to be contingent or even part time for all nurses? Like what if contingent was the standard and you could schedule yourself as much or as little as you want? You want full time hours? Schedule yourself full time. You want part time you can do that too, or if you truly want contingent you still have that option. As long as you meet the criteria for so many shifts a month. The mandatory every other weekend is beneficial to who exactly? I feel like it’s fair if you have to work at least one weekend a month,that way certain people are not forced to work EVERY weekend if they don’t want to. As far as flexible hours, I haven’t thought about that yet. Nurses do so much for hospitals, the least they could do is be more flexible with when we can work.It’s so frustrating. There could be a designated nurse schedule manager on the floor to kind of over-see it all to make sure staffing is good, or that could even be done in some kind of scheduling app.As far as insurance and benefits go it would be the same, if you are consistently working full time or part time you’re able to get benefits…seems simple enough or am I crazy lol?? This was kind of all over the place but I truly just wanted to get these thoughts out.Thank you for reading if you made it this far!! Anyways, with all of that being said, do any of you have any other schedule ideas or nursing “standards” that you feel are outdated and that should be changed? I’m really curious to know if this is actually a thing anywhere in the world.