SURVIVED MY FIRST NIGHT SHIFT!!! YAY!
It wasn't bad and I knew it wouldn't be I just didn't want to do it. If I had to work med-surg as my first job, I guess I could do it if I worked nights. If there are no night admissions then everything is great. Everything gets done by about midnight and then there is time to chart and then stuff starts up again around 3 or 4 am. I could take that 3-4 hours "break" if I had to work med-surg. The only thing I don't like is the 5 or 6 patients that each nurse has. Definitely not my idea of a good time, but at night, it's not too bad I guess. I took last night as my test shift, to make sure I was oriented to everything I needed to know. My hospital does paper charting for meds, vitals, assessments, I/O and notes, which is so backwards for me cause I've only ever done computer charting and on the computer, if you mess up you can hit delete. On paper, not so much. It was an odd learning curve for me but next week I'll be ready to take on one patient. By Saturday 1/30 I'll take three and then hopefully by the beginning of Feb I will be good enough/comfortable enough to do absolutely everything for all 4 or 5 of her patients. =/

I don't work again til next Wednesday cause my nurse took PTO which for me will be nice cause then I can get some homework done and make sure that all the paperwork that she needs from me is in order the next time I see her. And I can also be prepared to write nurses notes. I've never been good at those so I need to practice before I get back to the floor.

As far as working nights, sleeping days goes. Put a fat black sheet over your window and call it a day. Totally helped me and I actually got more than 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep. I think if I work nights for reals I will buy blackout curtains.

Well my cat is snoring on my bed and I'm flippin starved. Off to find food.