Why Working 'Just' Three Days a Week As a Nurse Is Utterly Exhausting

I was sitting at my computer screen, entering orders for a physician, and trying not to forget what he had said since I had neglected to write it down. I was charting my note, mentally taking inventory of all the tasks I had accomplished and problems I had identified and reported. My eyes felt gritty and my mentation frazzled. I glanced at the time on my computer screen and was taken aback that seven hours had flown by so quickly. Then I realized with dread that I hadn't documented a single thing on my other patient. I was so behind! And as my sand-filled eyes started to water in the frigid air of my surgical ICU I realized I was beat. I was exhausted. Yet I had not been working all week. It was my first day on shift in two weeks! I knew, though, that nursing wasn't so much exhausting because of the hours worked, but rather the work that was performed. Yes, 12 hour shifts actually turn into 13 and sometimes 14 hour shifts, and by golly yes, that makes for a supremely long day! But you only have to do that for three days, right? Maybe four. The rest of the week you're free and off jet-setting the country, leaving a trail of money in your wake as you go. Yeah, right. More like curled up under the covers in a dark room, recovering from a mental and emotional hangover much worse than one caused by the cheapest of Tequila. As I sat at my computer screen fighting my mental and physical fatigue I knew the reason I was utterly exhausted, and although by most career standards...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news