OOH working hours

Re: OOH working hours

Claire Cameron — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 13:23:35 GMT

At a practice I used to work at the night shift was 7pm until 9am 2-3 days then off all week until your next shift

Re: OOH working hours

Steph Phillips — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 22:31:08 GMT

Thank you for the replies :) want to apply to a few practices and one of them being an ooh one.. just wondered about how other nurses coped during school holidays as I assume you catch up on sleep when kids in school? .. like you said.. you are always a mum.. tired or not!!

Thanks again :) xxx

Re: OOH working hours

Amanda Harris — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:52:54 GMT

Hello

I work for Vets Now and am a mother of two school age children. It isn't too bad as I work in one of the quieter clinics and generally get a bit of sleep - I know in the busier clinics that isn't always possible. At the moment I am doing 2 nights in the week and every other weekend; I have done lot of differents shift patterns, but I find the maximum I can really cope with is a run of 3, even if I only have one night off and then do another 3. My problem is I have great difficulty sleeping during the day - not very helpful when you work nights. I am a senior nurse and that can be quite tiring as you are on call for much of the time. But on the whole, it has worked well for me - I have managed it for 3 years now. I would find a night job where I was up all night quite tiring though, particularly in the school holidays - you're always a mum, whether you are exhausted or not!

Re: OOH working hours

Louise B — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 09:42:36 GMT

Hi Steph,

I have worked nights but don't have kids. I could never have managed with sleep deprivation during the day as I always needed my sleep. My favourite shift pattern is 7 on, 7 off working 8pm - 8am and found I coped well with this. The longest shifts I worked were 6pm - 9am and I personally found those too long (had an hours commute each way too) as I rapidly became sleep deprieved and depressed.

Motherhood wise. No personal experience but one of the nurses at one of the clinics were I worked had two little un's (including one still being breast fed) and she tried to only work one night shift in a row as it was otherwise too much for her. She commuted also though. From the other nurses perspective though there was some friction as, if you don't have kids, most nurses want a block of nights followed by a block off and somebody just wanting odd nights tended to end up carving up the rota too much.

If I were you I would contact Vets Now and ask if they would mind putting you in contact with a few nurses who are also mothers as this might give you a better idea of how they coped and what they found worked for them. Off the top of my head I know of two senior nurses at Vets Now - Zoe at Derby and Adina at Hull - who managed the job (and the senior job is damn hard work) but I think they may have left now (they did the job for years though).