What Will My Schedule Look Like as a Nurse?

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After you have decided that nursing is the best career for you, you must begin your research to find out everything you can that relates to this profession. You will want to find out more information about the education and training, the typical duties, benefits and salary. Another aspect that you must take into consideration is the nursing schedule. It is well known that nurses work in shifts, but what does this mean exactly and what does a nurse have to do during these shifts?

The Shifts

This is the typical nursing schedule for a nurse. These specialists work in three shifts: the graveyard shift, night shift and day shift. These can be exchanged between the nurses according to their wishes and needs. However, you must keep in mind that a late night shift will never be followed by a day shift and, for obvious reasons; you can never work all the shifts on the same day.

Number of Hours Worked

According to MassNurses.org, a nurse will work an average of 10.3 hours per day and 37.3 hours per week. Out of four weekends per month, the nurses will work almost 1.4 of them. During the workday, you will be allowed to take breaks lasting almost 10 minutes. According to the same report, a nurse takes 1.6 of these breaks per day, which is quite disadvantageous, considering that a desk job will allow you to take a 30-minute break without having to eat on the run.

The study also shows that there have been 67 participants working more than 13 hours per day more than once a week. 30 participants also worked less than 10 hours off between the shifts on a regular basis. Moreover, 286 of them worked on a vacation day or on a day off. Finally, 80 nurses were required on call once a month.

Variety

As you can see, the nursing schedule differs greatly depending on a large variety of factors such as the working establishment, the location and your role. If you want to become a nurse, you must know that you will have variety in your life. Your days will always look differently and sometimes you may have to work very hard, while other days you will have a less busy schedule.

You have the option to choose the schedule you want and you can change it anytime you feel like it’s not working for you. So, if you don’t want to get bored and you like living an active life, you can choose to work in the emergency department. You will do night shifts on a regular basis and you will have to work on weekends and holidays.

If you don’t like the madness of an emergency department, you can go for a “milder” department or even for a private clinic where the program is not so hectic. If you don’t like this kind of variety, you can always choose to work in a physician’s office where there is less stress and the schedule is somewhat fixed.