rotating shifts....is this the norm?

1 I work 5 days per week and was hired as day/night rotation. This is a typical weekly schedule for me:
Monday: 7am-3:30om
Tuesday: 7am-3:30 pm
Wednesday: 11pm-7:15 am
Thursday: "Off" (sleeping all day though since I get home 7:15 am Thursday morning from my Wed. night shift)
Friday: 7am-3:30 pm

This is happening every week. I knew I'd have to rotate, but this seems a little much. It's really throwing me off. Other schedules have looked like: night, off, D,D, D, off, off, night, off, D, D, D, D, D.


Thanks for any insight! Last edit by ******guest****** on Jan 29, '11 : Reason: meant to type day/night not day/evening
That is not a day-evening rotation, it's a day-night rotation. Check with whoever does the schedule. It seems a bit unfair to have this as a fixed schedule, with that one night in the middle of the week.Best wishes.

Scary. I saw one of those kinds of scheduling for correction nursing jobs. And I thought: what!Meaning you can't do two jobs with that kind of schedule and it's not even top pay. I'm not surprised though. There are plenty of nurses looking for jobs. Looks like schedulers will be have less scheduling headaches.

We used to get schedules like this and worse when we had a sadistic manager. Rotating shifts should be done in a thoughtful manner and should rotate backwards if doing all three. From night, to PM, to day, to night, to better work with the body's circadian rhythm. Also, each shift should be for a minimum of three weeks at a time.

Wow. That would be hard. We don't have rotating shifts where I work. You are either day shift (7a to 7p) or night shift (7p to 7a). Only the PCA's work 8's and they also have set schedules.

That schedule sucks. No one at my facility works that kind of schedule. I have worked D/E rotations before and that is not bad. But D/N with the night scrunched in the middle? Heck no. That's terrible.

I used to see NG positions that rotated Day/Nite for this one hospital. How stupid, what a setup for failure.

I always wonder how nurses have random night shifts (or day shifts) thrown in the middle of their normal schedule.I'm hoping that I will function on a level higher than zombie if I'm in the same situation

We rotate day/ night (12 hr shifts), but we also self-schedule (we have to do 50/50), so for example, next schedule I work the first 3 wks on days and the 2nd 3 weeks on nights. Some people go back and forth, but for the most part, we get what we ask for (regarding shift, but they may change your day of the week). I could not even fathom trying to do a schedule like you describe.

I've never had a rotating shift. I've known nurses from other countries, like, for example, Israel, who said they rotated shifts. However, their schedule would be two weeks of days, two weeks of evenings, and then two weeks of nights. Your schedule sounds just CRAAAAZY!

Until I went to casual, I was a noc/PM rotation. That totally sucked, as it was NOT self-scheduled. My schedule was Fri: noc, Sat: noc, Sun:noc, Mon: off, Tue: PM, Wed:PM Thurs: PM, and start all over again.

In Ireland, UK and Australia we mostly do rotating shifts but it is 4 weeks of days then 2-3 weeks of nights, not this mixing it up each week. the roster that you have is unsafe and scary! It takes my body a good 36hr to recover from night shift pattern, so after my 4 nights the next day is useless! Then I go back for another 4!

For a number of years while I was still in the real world I worked 12 hour shifts that were six weeks of days and six weeks of nights. We worked 3 on and 4 off then 4 on and 3 off. We changed ends of the week every 12 weeks. Sounds complicated but it was really quite simple and easier to get used to than my current schedule or any of these that I read about here. I wish nursing would go to something like this.