I sincerely hope you're not, but if you're reading this and about to start a week of nights, then my heart goes out to you.
❤️🩹
It was that kind of malarkey contributed to me leaving the NHS, 20+ years ago.
You see, I'm old enough to have experienced both:
- the ‘bad old days’ of on-call, working from 8am on a Saturday morning, until 7pm on a Monday night, potentially with little or no sleep (certainly when I was doing General Surgery at Jimmy's), and
- the supposedly ‘better’ post-European Working Time Directive (EWTD) days when everything got moved over to shift work, to reduce our hours.
I much preferred the former, where I was tired, yes, but I was working as part of a tight-knit team that I had history with, I knew all the patients, and I only had to endure working these horror weekends once every 5 or 6 weeks.
After the change, I seldom knew the people I was working with (which meant less trust for learning operating skills), had less continuity of care with patients and due to the fact that there were ‘earlys’, ‘lates’ and ‘nights’ to cover, I lost 3 out of 5 or 6 of my weekends!! 😡
[Take a deep breath, Giles. It's ancient history now. You can ride your bike any time you like 😂]
Anyway, if you are about to start nights, or ever have to, here's something that might help.
It's a piece I wrote for the British Medical Journal (BMJ), when they asked if anyone would like to contribute 250 words on the topic. There were four other contributors who all had fantastic practical advice.
And then there was me, questioning what ‘dread’ even is… 😇😁😂
You can read the full article, with all the other helpful responses too, here: How to Beat Night Shift Dread.
💟
Giles
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