Nights people, what actually worked for the sleep?
Charlie after the night shiftThe question
Six weeks into three twelves and I have now tried blackout curtains, a fan, an eye mask, and four different bedtimes.
The nights are fine. It is the day after, and the stretch back toward something normal on days off, that I cannot solve.
Setups only please, not encouragement. What time do you go down, how long do you get, and do you flip back on your days off or hold the schedule all week?
The conversation
3 replies- Skyler on days nowRN, 2 years in, days now
Eighteen months of it, and the only thing that held up was refusing to flip. Same bedtime working or not, which cost me most of a social life and preserved everything else.
The day after a stretch is its own category. I stopped counting it as a day off and started treating it as the tail of the last shift. Nothing booked, nothing that needs a decision made in it.
- Beau nights in the EDRN, ED nights, 10 months
Opposite setup and it works for me, so this is clearly personal. I flip every time. Home, three hours, up for the afternoon, normal night, and I write off the first day back as useless.
What mattered more than the schedule was the drive. Sunglasses on before I leave the building, every time, because morning light on the way home undid every good habit I had.
- Bex in the float poolRN, float pool, 18 months
One thing neither answer mentions: food. I was eating at four in the morning because everybody else was, and stopping that did more for how I slept than any curtain.
Now the last real meal is before the shift and it is tea and fruit after that. Took about three weeks to stop feeling deprived.
What would you tell them?
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