Infuriating Quora Question About Night Shift Nurses “Watching Patients Sleep.”
Have you ever browsed around Quora and read some of the things people ask? It’s pretty fascinating, really, but yesterday I read a question that infuriated me to the point that I couldn’t even compose a thought to respond.
Someone asked if night shift nurses “watch people sleep all night.” Now that I’ve had some time to cool down, I realize that the question was (hopefully) from a place of ignorance and not an attempt to make enemies of all nurses everywhere on the planet.
Let’s discuss what happens in a hospital at night. Patients come in at all hours of the day and night. They have pain, they are scared, they sometimes puke, need help to toilet themselves (if we are lucky), they have wounds that need to be cleaned, medications that need to be given, and most of the time there are other people with them who are also scared and very inquisitive. If there are empty beds, they will be filled with patients.
Sometimes things go really well, and we have patients who sleep a little bit, but seriously, they wouldn’t be there in the first place if they were well enough to sleep all night. Doesn’t that sound logical? Why is this even a question? The patient allowed to sleep more than 4 hours is a rarity. I digress.
The aging population is a large portion of who we serve, for the simple fact that the older one gets, the more susceptible one is to developing chronic conditions, especially congestive heart failure, lung disease, heart attacks, and a plethora of other ailments. In addition to these, which I’m sure most people have heard of, there is dementia. If you’re an 80 year old woman who gets confused at home, in the same environment you’re used to being in continuously, how do you imagine your brain reacts when you’re in a strange, dark place, with people coming in and out asking you if you know where you are, what the year is and who is the president?
I could go into detail about some of the situations I’ve found myself in, but that would take too long. Suffice it to say, trying to comfort a person who if suffering from severe dementia and having a moment is an intimidating task. Sometimes it’s so daunting that security has to get involved. That’s not a good thing, obviously, but when things get physical, it can’t be helped. Occasionally we get kicked, punched or scratched by these unfortunate older folks, but that’s not as bad as being physically and verbally abused by people who don’t have an organic brain disorder, which also happens on the night shift (and day shift). These are the unfortunate side effects of working with people for a living.
Although all of those things sound awful, it’s not as bad as when a patient suddenly takes a turn for the worse, we have to try our best to save his/her life, comfort the family, convince the physician we need him right now, and still take care of all the other patients. When we don’t save them, we feel like crap. We are human, after all. No matter the circumstances, being a caregiver when a patient passes leaves a little hole in our heart.
But taking care of people isn’t all we do. We also have to write everything down, which in our world is called, “charting.” One of the verses in the nurse bible says, “If it isn’t charted, it isn’t done.” Thanks to our litigious society, we have to be very careful to document, document, document.
I could LITERALLY write all night long about the different things we have to manage during a 12 hour shift in nursing, but I will spare you the details. If you were at all interested in that information, you might already be a nurse.
Specific to night shift is a special kind of “crazy” we have to deal with, and that is the constant, relentless feeling of being tired ALL THE TIME. In my almost 30 years of nursing, 20 of it has been on the night shift. Even though we are fortunate to only work 3 shifts a week for a full time position, being awake all night really messes a person up. I have a hard time switching my sleep patterns, so I find myself awake when everyone else is asleep (like right now). Even on my nights off, I nap during the day, which limits my ability to connect with my friends and family, except at very specific hours, and probably frustrates my husband quite a bit!
I know I’m sounding a bit whiny, so I need to close this rant on a positive note. In spite of all the bad things about night shift nursing, there is no other job I’d rather do. The hospital at night is very different from the hospital during the day. We work really well together as a team because we are used to doing things with less people. And since there are fewer ancillary staff around, we have more time to spend with our patients and their families.
So, if you have questions about what night shift nurses do, I have answers. But please don’t assume we watch people sleep.
