New Nurses: A Guide to Working Overnight

As a healthcare professional, you know better than any that working overnight can be really tough for your health. Those who shift their sleep patterns like this tend to experience more illnesses and may even have a shorter life expectancy than others – so it’s really no wonder that we dread those graveyard shifts so much, after all.

Luckily, there are a lot of experienced and knowledgeable nurses out there who can help you out with their tips. That way, it won’t feel as hard and you might even be able to come prepared to those few first shifts.

Here is a handful of advice to how you can get through the overnight shifts as a nurse without losing your sanity.

First: Remember to hydrate

When you work overnight, there is nothing more important than staying hydrated. It’s not just to keep yourself awake, though, even if this also helps – but staying hydrated when you work during the long hours is vital to your health as well.

Keep a water bottle with you at all times and learn to enjoy the benefits of herbal tea as well. Do try to stay away from coffee as much as you can, by the way, as it won’t really do you any good in the long run.

You might feel a bit more awake after that first warm cup, but the tiredness is going to come back with vengeance after a while.

Next: Block out all the sunlight when you sleep

Before you start your first shift, it’s a good idea to get blackout curtains for your bedroom. Sooner or later, you are going to come home exhausted and ready for bed – but, with the sun still up, many new nurses find that getting sleep during daytime is quite a challenge.

Your body is simply not producing the kind of melatonin you need to sleep when it’s all bright and sunny. Darkness, on the other hand, will get the production going so you should buy those blackout curtains as soon as possible. That way, you can feel confident that you’ll at least be able to sleep when you’re back home.

Remember to consider your options

Many nurses feel a bit overwhelmed after their first few graveyard shifts, and that’s completely natural. The important thing is to remind yourself that you can always build on your career by looking at another course such as this dnp midwifery online degree, for example, which means that you suddenly have a lot of other options.

It just makes it a bit easier to figure out if this is what you’d like to do or if you want to continue in another direction within the field of healthcare in the future.