The Day Shift

As a few of you might know, my schedule has changed a bit.  I'm now a day-shifter!  It's really exciting because now I don't have to work my life around getting caught up on sleep.  It's the weirdest thing.  I was on night shift for 3 years!  I said when I first took my job in Montana, I'll only do this night shift thing for a year, and then move up the ladder and go to days.  Well, I never did, mostly due to fear.  But now I did it and things are going pretty well.

Day shift is different than night, weird huh?  Patients eat meals during the day.  Their family, and friends, and any old person that's in the hospital come to visit them.  There are people everywhere.  Therapies are in and out of patient rooms, updating me about their progress.  And oh, the doctors.  They are around too, but that doesn't mean they are any nicer on the phones.  They just aren't half asleep when I call......usually.

The only part that makes me sad is all the co-workers I don't get to hang out with anymore.  Typically, night-shifters are a little more laid back and there is more time at night to chat with co-workers.  I miss that.  I miss the people I worked with, and they call me "traitor."  I know it's a compliment that they wish I hadn't switched, but girls gotta do what a girls gotta do.  The day shift seems to have received me well, but I'm still working my way in with some of those cranky nurses we all know exist.  

So here's a story for you:  Last week our charge nurse was sick.  So my boss thought, "Hey, Kelsy used to charge on nights, she could figure it out on days.  Let's throw her in."  And he did.  I was charge nurse on our busiest day of the week.  We had 15 discharges that day!!!  That was a new record.  We kicked over half of our patients out that day.  And then you have a charge nurse that has never done a discharge before.  We don't do many of those on night shift, if any!  But I figured it out, got my feet under me, and tried to keep a smile on my face.  I even received an award for being so flexible and keeping order to an otherwise hellish day.  So there you go, I pin a rose to my nose.  :)