I had a very nice Christmas. I came home from my night shift at work, everybody got up, and we exchanged presents. I went to be at close to 10 AM. I got up for Christmas dinner at 4pm. My wife made a great Turkey dinner with mashed red potatoes and all of the trimmings. I was still really knackered and had to go back to bed-I slept from 6-10 PM. It was very frustrating to miss so much of Christmas because I was just so bloody fatigued from working nights-I worked the graveyard shift on both Christmas Eve and Christmas.
Nobody puts a gun to your head to work nights. It’s part of what we do in my profession, just like a cop or a fireman. That said, nights just physically and mentally really take a toll on you. My buddy Moose, the cop down in Florida, is just going to days after working several years as a K-9 Cop down in Palmetto. When his canine partner Talon died back in November, he put in to work days. He felt the nights were just beating the shit out of him, too.
On January 5th, I start a new job working at the Veteran’s Administration Medical Center here in Minneapolis. There are a variety of reasons why I took the job. One big reason was that I was offered a chance to work days(7a-3p) and evenings (3p-11p)-no nights. I also feel like I have been working away from “hands-on” nursing for quite some time-over 12 years now. I know there are people in my profession who would like at my phone triage job as pretty easy, and why would I leave it. Well…I think there is something to be said about switching out your routine and doing something different; to get out of my comfort zone, if you will. It’s not always a bad thing to do. I did it when I left home to study in France a couple of times. I did it when we hosted foreign exchange students and when I went back into the Army Reserves after 9/11.
I won’t lie: I am a bit nervous about getting back into hospital nursing. 12 years is a bloody long time to have been away from it, and there have been a lot of changes. I have to admit that I was intrigued to sign on with the new spinal cord injury department that they are opening at the VA.
Part of the other reason that I wanted to get back into hands-on nursing is to get my skills back up to snuff so that some day I can do some travel nursing. There are all kinds of different programs where I could go work in the UK, New Zealand or Australia. The idea of working in a different system intrigues me greatly-but to do that, I need to get back into hospital nursing.
For the short term, it will nice to get off nights and have a normal life-or at least what passes as normal in my life and in my line of work.
i cant understand……