nurses roster in dublin

mynightnurse

Hi
im thinking of doing nursing after my leaving cert and I would like to know what sort of roster do nurses work in Dublin, do they do a full week of nights and how often do they do nights ?:)

cligereen

As I'm sure you can appreciate, the job is 24/7. Shift patterns alter depending on the hospital / ward / department etc. Nights are part of the job (except for day wards) and come around frequently. Some hospitals still have a 7 night roster, others not.

If night shifts are going to cause you a problem then maybe nursing isn't the career for you.

bethm24

Hey ya,

Make sure you are making the right choice here, Trust me im a nurse, and it is a very tough career in so many ways. You have to be a real peoples person, good communicater, great team player, tolerance, able to handle ALOT of pressure, huge responsibility- the patients are in your hands and sometimes itis just so short staffed that it is very dangerous practise sometimes. You dont get breaks, most of the time u dont have time to go to the bathroom, sometimes you have people yelling at you, you often have doctors ordering you about and you feel like a skivvy, some patients think you are there private waitress and because you have to be "nice as pie" all the time, and believe me management are watching you, you have to smile all day long and take all the **** that comes flying at you! Your on your own maybe with a drug you dont know anything about, its 5 in the evening, your on with another nurse who has not a clue a bitchy matron, doctor is busy, you have to do a procedure u know nothing about!! Its so hard man, just so you know it mostly sucks.

But anyway you were wondering about hours so here it is:
You work a 37 and half hour week (well usually it is so busy u just cant leave at the time you should be leaving and no one cares and they are always asking u to stay and do overtime).
You will work from 7.45 to 8.00pm two days in the week
You will work 7.45 to 5 or 6
Then you have a short day 7.45 to 3 or 2
It depends
Then every 4 weeks(depends) you do night duty
You work 4 nights 8.00pm to 08.00am mon to thurs
Then you are off till the following fri nite, sat nite and sun nite you work. Then comes the fun bit you are straight back on days for usually a 12 hour shift on that tuesday, So u sleep all day monday (or else get up and be horrible to everyone) and get up 4 work again for the tuesday , so for me u dont enjoy the break on the nights cause you are dreading going back in there/

Well now maybe u will love nursing, i just wish someone had been straight with me b4 i did it! Good luck!! Oh and i hope you wont mind cleaning a million bums a day, thats the least of our worries!!!:pac:

JuliusCaesar

bethm24 wrote: »

Its so hard man, just so you know it mostly sucks.

for me u dont enjoy the break on the nights cause you are dreading going back in there/

Well now maybe u will love nursing, i just wish someone had been straight with me b4 i did it! :

Hi bethm24, you sound very disillusioned. Are you intendinig to leave nursiing?

Just checked with the nurses in mental health: they work 12 hour shifts - one short week and one long week so the *average* is 37.5 hrs p w. Forgot to ask about nights. Other nurses work 9-5 only, Mon-Fri - they're the Community Nurses/Day Hospital/Day Centre. The ones on 9-5 say they do miss shifts as they have to do things when everyone else is doing them - going to bank, supermarket etc.

There may be changes to the shifts coming down the line so that there is more continuity for patients, with 3 shifts of 8 hours covering the 24 hrs.

DrIndy

not all docs are bad ;-)

teamsamson

nursing is a wonderful job, and good on you for thinkin about goin into it! may have its hard days, but its never boring and you have great job satisfaction!

depends on which hospital and what are you are workin in, but mostly its 3 long days/wk, 13 hr shifts, but only get paid for 12, and every 8 weeks or so you have to do a 4th long day (to make up the 37.5 hr week). also have to do week of nights about every 5-7 weeks, but you get your week off after so its grand.

best of luck and dont listen to everyone, its a great job, your workin collegues are great (all docs, physios, salt, ot's, porters, kitchen, cleaners etc) and you meet very interesting people.