Nursing Blog with Expert Insights

Check out part 1 where I talk about the general good and bad of working night shift here . Talking about the patients at night is a whole new discussion. There are a handful of difficulties and patterns I've noted over the years, mostly just in the very sick/elderly patients. For example, if a patient passes away at night, it almost always seems to happen between 3 and 6am. I don't know if I'm the only person that thinks that or not, but most of the time in my experience, the

Hi again! I thought I'd write a post about the good and bad of night shift, since I see people ask on forums what it's like and all. I've been working nights exclusively since almost the start of my career six years ago, and there are distinct pros and cons to it. It's definitely not for everybody, and frankly it's not great for me considering my narcolepsy history, but I still love it and can't get myself to switch to days. There are several things I like about night shift.

It was a Saturday night, and I was told that I was getting an admission from the emergency room. I started looking up the patient's chart and saw that he was there for alcohol withdrawal. The patient was young, in his 30s. Soon after that, the phone rang, and I received the official report from the ED RN. The patient arrived at the ICU about 20 minutes later. He did not have any family with him, which would make completing the admission assessment documentation difficult, giv

Wow, I've been out of work for 3 months now. I have suffered from narcolepsy for almost 10 years, but this year for some reason, my body decided to start having cataplexy episodes. It's been a long, long road, but this post is about describing my experience as a patient on my own unit. At the beginning of May, I arrived at work like normal for the first of 3 in-a-row night shifts. I got report on my patients and stood up to go meet them. After taking 3 steps away from the nur

Heart failure is a bitch to live with. You have to always be on top of your fluid intake, restrict how much you drink, carefully obey special diets, RELIGIOUSLY take your meds, monitor your vitals and electrolytes, keep your appointments, track your weight and output, and sometimes genetics STILL wins and you end up in the hospital anyways. Some people are really good at living with it. Others really just don't give a crap about keeping up with their treatment and end up repe

Have you ever seen Game of Thrones? There's this particular scene that I always used to think humorously and accurately represented the state of my hospital when COVID reached the US back in 2019/2020. It's this little clip of John Snow standing alone while epically drawing his sword at the Battle of the Bastards, bracing himself for the oncoming stampede of cavalry. In the gif, John Snow represents us, the medical staff at the hospital at the start of COVID, preparing our un