Nurses Night Shift Quotes

If listening was truly a lifesaving measure, then night shift was a prime time for saving lives. The cover of darkness provided safe cover for the truth to emerge. Confessions, words that people didn't even know resided in them, flew like startled bats into the night. People confessed to stealing things, to hurting people, to loving some and hating others.

There will come a time when each of us will need a clean, well-lighted place that stays open all day and night, offering shelter from life’s storms. This is a hospital.

My mum, her sister and my late grandmother were all nurses. Until fairly recently, nursing was one of the few occupations available to bright Australian women of modest means. Conditioned by years of night duty, sleep - and lack of sleep - was a constant topic of family conversation.

At the nurses’ station the night-shift RNs cluster on chairs, looking like birds wanting to shove their tired heads under a free wing. Their lined faces and heavy-lidded eyes show how hard it is to stay awake and alert for an entire night. I don’t work a lot of nights, but when I do I feel it. I hit a wall at 2:00 a.m., then again at 4:00. The hospital’s strong tea, bad coffee, Diet Coke from the vending machine—they all help, but nothing non-pharmaceutical will really make me feel awake for the entire night, and I’m not going down the pharmacologic road. The day after, even if I sleep all morning and afternoon, it feels as though I’m seeing the world through gauze.

Denmark recently became the first country to pay worker compensation to women who had developed breast cancer after years of night-shift work in government-sponsored jobs, such as nurses and air cabin crew. Other governments—Britain, for example—have so far resisted similar legal claims, refusing payout compensation despite the science.

Your Overworld persona is a hero,” said Bao. “Heartbeat is a hero. Calaca's a psychopath, but he was right about one thing — the internet is the real world. What you do there matters, and what you do here matters. I've seen you spend days nursing a sick sister back to health; I've seen you work triple shifts in this restaurant to pay your family's mortgage. You took Gabi to ballet when your parents were too scared to send her. Three nights ago you ran into the middle of a freeway to rescue your friend. You're not just a hero, Mari, you're my hero. If anyone can figure this out, it's you.

Okay, I’m going to tell you what I think. It’s like this,” he said grimly. “Quit or don’t quit. Take the promotion or not take it. But, if you take the graveyard shift, mark my words, we will eventually—I don’t know how, and I don’t know when—live to regret it.” Without saying another word he walked inside. In bed Alexander let her kiss his hands. He was on his back, and Tatiana sidled up to him naked, kneeling by his side. Taking his hands, she kissed them slowly, digit by digit, knuckle by knuckle, pressing them to her trembling breasts, but when she opened her mouth to speak, Alexander took his hands away. “I know what you’re about to do,” he said. “I’ve been there a thousand times. Go ahead. Touch me. Caress me. Whisper to me. Tell me first you don’t see my scars anymore, then make it all right. You always do, you always manage to convince me that whatever crazy plan you have is really the best for you and me,” he said. “Returning to blockaded Leningrad, escaping to Sweden, Finland, running to Berlin, the graveyard shift. I know what’s coming. Go ahead, I’ll be good to you right back. You’re going to try to make me all right with you staying in Leningrad when I tell you that to save your hard-headed skull you must return to Lazarevo? You want to convince me that escaping through enemy territory across Finland’s iced-over marsh while pregnant is the only way for us? Please. You want to tell me that working all Friday night and not sleeping in my bed is the best thing for our family? Try. I know eventually you’ll succeed.” He was staring at her blonde and lowered head. “Even if you don’t,” he continued, “I know eventually, you’ll do what you want anyway. I don’t want you to do it. You know you should be resigning, not working graveyard—nomenclature, by the way, that I find ironic for more reasons that I care to go into. I’m telling you here and now, the path you’re taking us on is going to lead to chaos and discord not order and accord. It’s your choice, though. This defines you—as a nurse, as a woman, as a wife—pretend servitude. But you can’t fool me. You and I both know what you’re made of underneath the velvet glove: cast iron.” When Tatiana said nothing, Alexander brought her to him and laid her on his chest. “You gave me too much leeway with Balkman,” he said, kissing her forehead. “You kept your mouth shut too long, but I’ve learned from your mistake. I’m not keeping mine shut—I’m telling you right from the start: you’re choosing unwisely. You are not seeing the future. But you do what you want.” Kneeling next to him, she cupped him below the groin into one palm, kneading him gently, and caressed him back and forth with the other. “Yes,” he said, putting his arms under his head and closing his eyes. “You know I love that, your healing stroke. I’m in your hands.” She kissed him and whispered to him, and told him she didn’t see his scars anymore, and made it if not all right then at least forgotten for the next few hours of darkness.

Of course, with my parents, my three sisters, and Colston already sharing that one room, adding me to the mix made it just too crowded. So my sister Sara volunteered to sleep in my hospital room. When we were ready to settle in for the night, she headed back over to the hospital and climbed into my hospital bed. She tucked the pillows all around herself, got comfortable, pulled up the blankets, and fell asleep. She wasn’t asleep long, however. She was in a hospital, after all. Throughout the night, in a hospital, doctors and nurses go on rounds. In the middle of the night a group of doctors and nurses on the night shift all shuffled into the room, talking about my case, and startled Sara from her slumber. She poked her head out of the covers. The doctors all collectively gasped and one of them said, “Who are you?” She nervously laughed and said, “Oh! Sorry. I’m Noah’s sister Sara. Noah stayed at the Mologne House tonight with our family.” “Oh, he did?” the doctor replied, sounding very surprised but pleased. “Well, that’s huge!” They were still standing in the room so Sara said, “Yeah, it is. So I am sleeping in here.” She waited for them to get the hint. They started laughing and told her they would let her get back to sleep.

Pervitin became a sensation,” one psychologist reported. “It soon gained acceptance in a very wide range of circles; students used it as a survival strategy for the exertions of exams; telephone switchboard operators and nurses swallowed it to get through the night shift, and people doing difficult physical or mental labor used it to improve their performance.

reducing the number of nurses per patient and thereby reducing supervision, making the deed easier for would-be medical serial killers.

Another stimulant-like drug, modafinil (brand name Provigil), works by stimulating both the histamine network and dopamine, which makes us awake and attentive. Originally designed for narcolepsy, and popular with shift workers like night nurses and pilots, it also has benefits for some with ADHD. The

A long time ago inside a local ice rink, 15 year olds went to battle to win a game of hockey.  They played for themselves, for their teams, for their coaches, for their towns, and for their families. It was a 0-0 tie in the 2nd period.     Both goalies were outstanding.  But one appeared to be somewhere else. Thinking.  The shot came.    The antagonist wasn’t aiming to break the scoreless tie.  He was living up to his agreement with the other team’s coach.  A coach who wanted his son to be the team's goalie.     He didn’t want a new goalie that could take his team where they have never been.  The playoffs.  A goalie that could secure his team at the top.  The coach watched the shot he bought.      The goalie could have shifted, dodged out of the way, but he was paralyzed.  He dropped to the ice when the puck struck his unprotected neck.     The player skated over to examine the goalie. He had accomplished his task.    And with the money he earned, he can buy the bicycle he always wanted.     The goalie’s father was standing amongst the other parents.  He was enraged that his son didn’t make the save.     He felt the hard work he put into his boy slowly fade, and quickly die out.  He knew how good his son was, and would be.  He knew the puck struck because the goalie let it.  He did not know why.   I groaned as the puck hit me in the arm.  I had pads, but pads can only soften the blow. I squeezed my arm.     My father stood and watched.     My friend fired another shot that whacked me in the throat, knocking me down.  I felt dizzy.      It was frigid on the pond in winter.     This is where I learned to play hockey.  This is also where I learned it was painful to be a goaltender.  I got up slowly, glowering at him.  My friend was perplexed at my tenacity.     “This time, stay down!” And then he took the hardest slap shot I have ever encountered.     The puck tore through the icy air at incredible speed right into my face.     My glove rapidly came up and snatched it right before it would shatter my jaw.  I took my glove off and reached for the puck inside.     I swung my arm and pitched it as fiercely as I could at my friend.     Next time we play, I should wear my mask and he should wear a little more cover than a hat.  I turned towards my father.  He was smiling.  That was rare.     I was relieved to know that I was getting better and he knew it.  The ice cracked open and I dropped through…      The goalie was alone at the hospital.  He got up and opened the curtains the nurse keeps closing at night so he could see through the clear wall.     He eyed out the window and there was nothing interesting except a lonely little tree.  He noticed the way the moonlight shined off the grass and radiated everything else.  But not the tree.  The tree was as colourless as the sky.     But the sky had lots of bright little glowing stars.  What did the tree have?  He went back to his bed and dozed off before he could answer his own question.   Nobody came to visit him at the hospital but his mother.     His father was at home and upset that his son is no longer on the team.  The goalie spot was seized by the team’s original goalie, the coach’s son.     The goalie’s entire life had been hockey.  He played every day as his father observed.  He really wanted a regular father, whatever that was.  A father that cares about him and not about hockey.  The goalie did like hockey, but it was a game.         A sport just like other sports, only there’s an ice surface to play on.  But he did not love hockey.     It was just something he became very good at, with plenty of practice and bruises.     He was silent in his new team’s locker room, so he didn’t assume anyone would come and see how he was doing.

Hospital” turned out to represent a punctuated tedium, the recurrence of blood pressure and temperature checks, the placement and emptying of bedpans and painful switching of IV lines from the crook of one elbow to the other, and the switching of nurses as day and night were destroyed and replaced with tripartite shifts.

Three days before Christmas, Tony Dungy’s phone rang in the middle of the night. His wife answered and handed him the receiver, thinking it was one of his players. There was a nurse on the line. Dungy’s son Jamie had been brought into the hospital earlier in the evening, she said, with compression injuries on his throat. His girlfriend had found him hanging in his apartment, a belt around his neck. Paramedics had rushed him to the hospital, but efforts at revival were unsuccessful.3.34 He was gone. A chaplain flew to spend Christmas with the family. “Life will never be the same again,” the chaplain told them, “but you won’t always feel like you do right now.” A few days after the funeral, Dungy returned to the sidelines. He needed something to distract himself, and his wife and team encouraged him to go back to work. “I was overwhelmed by their love and support,” he later wrote. “As a group, we had always leaned on each other in difficult times; I needed them now more than ever.” The team lost their first play-off game, concluding their season. But in the aftermath of watching Dungy during this tragedy, “something changed,” one of his players from that period told me. “We had seen Coach through this terrible thing and all of us wanted to help him somehow.” It is simplistic, even cavalier, to suggest that a young man’s death can have an impact on football games. Dungy has always said that nothing is more important to him than his family. But in the wake of Jamie’s passing, as the Colts started preparing for the next season, something shifted, his players say. The team gave in to Dungy’s vision of how football should be played in a way they hadn’t before. They started to believe.

How did I prepare for night shifts? When I was a small, anxious kid, I checked my mom in her sleep to make sure she was still breathing.

Blakeborough has never struck me as the kind of man to overlook criminal behavior, even in his brother.” “True. He has a strong moral sense, even if he does hide it beneath an equally strong aversion to people.” He drew back to stare at her. “Forgive me, sweeting, but I cannot imagine you married to him. His melancholy would give you fits within a month.” “Right,” she teased, “because I’m much better off married to a man who follows plans so slavishly that he stays awake half the night for fear of oversleeping and missing the coronation.” He arched an eyebrow. “I couldn’t sleep for watching you nurse Ambrose. It’s been some time since I…well…saw your charms unveiled in any other capacity. I have to take my pleasures where I may.” “Aw, my poor dear,” she said in mock concern. Deciding to put him out of his misery, she added, “I ought to say that’s what you get for being so unfashionable as to share a bedchamber with your wife, but as it happens, Dr. Worth--” The music abruptly ended, and the sound of a gong being struck broke into everyone’s conversations. They fell silent as Max went to stand at the entrance to the room with Victor and Isabella at his side. “Attention, everyone!” Max clapped his cousin on the back. “I am proud and pleased to introduce to you the new owner of Manton’s Investigations.” Cheers and applause ensued. When it died down, Tristan called out, “So the legal machinations are finally done? Dom has actually let go of the thing at last?” “I signed the papers yesterday,” Dom told his brother. He gazed fondly at Jane. “I decided I’d lost enough of my life to finding other people’s families. Now I’d rather spend time with my own.” “I’ll bet that didn’t stop you from writing a contract of epic proportions.” Lisette grinned at her husband. “How many stipulations did Dom make before he agreed to complete the sale?” “Only one, actually,” Max said. Everyone’s jaw dropped, including Jane’s. She gaped at her husband. “Only one? You didn’t dictate how Victor is to run the thing and when and where and--” “As you once said so eloquently, my love, ‘you can set a plan in motion, but as soon as it involves people, it will rarely commence exactly as you wish.’ There didn’t seem much point in setting forth a plan that wouldn’t be followed.” Dom smirked at her. “I do heed your trenchant observations, you know. Sometimes I even act on them.” She was still staring at him incredulously when he shifted his gaze to Victor. “Besides, Victor is a good man. I trust him to uphold the reputation of Manton’s Investigations.” Jane glanced at Victor. “You’re not going to change the name to ‘Cale Investigations’?” Victor snorted. “I’d have to be mad. Who wants to start from scratch to build a company’s reputation? It’s known for excellence as Manton’s, and it will always be known as Manton’s, as long as I have anything to say about it.” “So what was the one stipulation that Dom required?” Tristan asked. Dom scowled. “That it never, in any official capacity, whether in interviews or correspondence or consultation, be referred to as ‘the Duke’s Men.’” As everyone burst into laughter, Jane stretched up to kiss his cheek. “Now, that sounds more like you, my darling.

In a report that brought together findings from studies over the past forty years of more than 100,000 employed women, those working irregular nighttime hours resulting in poor-quality sleep, such as nurses who performed shift work (a profession occupied almost exclusively by woman at the time of these earlier studies), had a 33 percent higher rate of abnormal menstrual cycles than those working regular daytime hours. Moreover, the woman working erratic hours were 80 percent more likely to suffer from issues of sub-fertility that reduced the ability to get pregnant. Woman who do become pregnant and routinely sleep less than eight hours a night are also significantly more likely to suffer a miscarriage in the first trimester, relative to those consistently sleeping eight hours or more a night.

get to the door. Anyway, they’ve stuck it on a poster on the wall now so I can’t miss it. Colm O’Flynn. Stay in yer fecking bed, ya eejit. I dictated that to Mike, the nurse on night shift, and he wrote it up for me. He says if anyone asks me, I’ve to deny it was him. That’s not such a tough ask – I forget who did it at least half a dozen times a day. That thought ends and it takes me a moment to get to the next one. The gaps are the worst bit, because sometimes I get the fear that another one won’t come. That’s why I have to get these videos finished. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not giving up. They can tell me I’m a dying man all they like, but I still think the treatment will work, it’ll buy me some time and then someone, somewhere will come up with an even better treatment or cure for this thing. It’s got to happen because I’m not ready to go yet. Nope, not at all. But

The only sounds at the late hour were the faint jingle of a phone ringing in the nurses’ station, the ping of an elevator, the faraway sound of the wheels of a cart, and the gentle beep of Brandon’s vital signs monitor. They wouldn’t allow any flowers or personal items in the ICU, but Sloan had snuck in an engagement photo. It sat on the table next to the bed. Her and Brandon on the beach, the surf crashing around their feet, her tattooed arm over his shoulder, them looking at each other. Both of them laughing. I looked back at him and sighed. “You’re going to have some gnarly scars, buddy.” They’d started the skin grafts for the road rash on his arm. “But you’ll get to do everything you planned to do with your life. One of us is going to get the girl. I’ll help you any way I can. Even if I have to wheel your ass to the altar.” I could picture his smile. With any luck I’d see it in a few hours. A knock on the door frame turned me around in my chair. “Hey, cutie.” Valerie came into the room for her vitals check. She turned the lights up, and I stood and stretched. As if sleeping in a chair wasn’t hard enough, the activity every two hours was the final kicker. I wouldn’t call anything I did on these overnight shifts sleeping. Maybe napping, but not sleeping. Every two hours Brandon was moved. They checked his airways, changed out bags, looked at his vitals. I don’t know how Sloan was handling doing this almost nightly for the last three weeks. Sloan was a good woman. I’d always liked her, but now she’d earned my respect, and I was grateful Brandon and Kristen had her. “Did you decide what day you want to bring the kids to the station?” I asked Valerie, yawning. She cycled the blood pressure cuff on Brandon’s arm and smiled. “I’m thinking Tuesday. You on shift Tuesday?” “Yup.” She wrote down some notes on Brandon’s chart and then gave me a raised eyebrow. “Any updates with your lady friend?” I laughed a little. “No.” The whole nursing staff knew about my depressing love life. I’d gotten hit on a few too many times by some of the younger nurses. I couldn’t claim to have a girlfriend, and I wasn’t married, so it was either “I’m gay” or “I’m in love with that girl over there.” I’d gone with the latter, and now I wished I’d said I was gay. They didn’t know why Kristen wouldn’t date me, just that she wouldn’t. It had turned into the favorite topic of the ICU. A real-life episode of Grey’s Anatomy. I rarely got through a Brandon visit without it coming up. The drama escalated when Kristen had been hit on by the nurses’ favorite single orthopedic surgeon. According to the nurses’ gossip circuit, Kristen told him to go fuck himself. And apparently she’d actually said, “Go fuck yourself.” After that everyone was sure she was holding out for me. Only I knew better.

Why do you like him so much?” Lada asked, the wonder of the night above her stealing the sting from her question. Mehmed was quiet for a long time before answering. “That day you found me in the garden? Molla Gurani is the tutor who struck me.” “You should have had him killed,” Lada said. Mehmed laughed softly. “It sounds odd, but I am glad he hit me. Before him, no one, no tutor, no nurse ever stood up to me. They let me rage and rant, allowed me to be a terror. The more I pushed, the more they looked the other way. My father never saw me, my mother could not be bothered to take so much as a meal with me. No one cared who I was or what I became.” Lada tried to shift away from the thing poking into her heart and making her so uncomfortable, but there were no rocks beneath her. “And then Molla Gurani came. That first day, when he hit me, I could not believe it. I wanted to kill him. But what he said the next day changed me forever. He told me I was born for greatness, placed in this world by the hand of God, and he would never let me forget or abandon that trust.” Mehmed shrugged, his shoulder pressing against Lada’s. “Molla Gurani cared who I was and who I would become. I have tried ever since to live up to that.” Lada swallowed hard against the painful lump that had built in her throat. She could not blame Mehmed for latching on to a man who saw him, who demanded more of him and helped him attain it. It was a lonely, cold thing to live without expectations. She unwrapped her hand from where it clutched the pouch at her heart and cleared her throat. “He is still the most boring man alive.” Mehmed laughed, while Radu remained far away and silent.

Marilyn was twenty-two and more frightened than he had ever seen her, terrified of motherhood and its ironclad accompanying responsibility—but the minute Wendy arrived, the very second he laid her, squalling, on her mother’s chest, Marilyn shifted. She came of age instantaneously and suddenly she was Wendy’s mom; she was in her element and everything clicked. And he stood there, his eyes filled with tears, a brand-new and unexpected panic roiling in his gut. And it had been the same thing three times over—another girl, another girl, another girl—despite mounting responsibility and the steady accumulation of debt and details and obligations and years, simple numerical age. Each time his wife shifted fluidly into the mother of two, then three, then four; into a homeowner, a bookkeeper, a crisis counselor, a chauffeur. Caring for their house and their children while also tending to his aging father—Richard now declining, on dialysis, and in need of at-home nursing care—to their rambunctious dog, to him. She did this, and the structure of his daily life remained relatively unchanged, and yet he was the one fucking things up. He, on this terrible night, had given her one more enormous crisis, a ten-foot wave of malicious ineptitude. And she—his lovely wife—had cried herself to sleep, landing in a contorted position that would have been funny under better circumstances.

hospital life has a rhythm, the flurry of activity just before the morning shift change, the midday hustle, the stillness and quiet of the late-night hours interrupted occasionally by a blur of doctors and nurses rushing to revive someone.

Heard of a chap once who reckoned it was good enough for a bath, but by the time he’d got himself nicely soaped the shower was travelling on ten miles a minute, and there wasn’t another drop of rain for a fortnight, which wasn’t too pleasant for the prickly heat.” The homestead rubbed its back in sympathy against the nearest upright, and Dan added that “of course the soap kept the mosquitoes dodged a bit,” which was something to be thankful for. “There generally is something to be thankful for, if you only reckon it out,” he assured all. But the traveller, reduced to a sweltering prickliness by his exertions, wasn’t “noticing much at present,” as he rubbed his back in his misery against the saddle of the horse he was unpacking. Then his horse, shifting its position, trod on his foot; and as he hopped round, nursing his stinging toes, Dan found an illustration for his argument. “Some chaps,” he said, “ ’ud be thankful to have toes to be trod on”; and ducking to avoid a coming missile, he added cheerfully, “But there’s even an advantage about having wooden legs at times. Heard once of a chap that reckoned ’em just the thing. Trod on a death-adder unexpected-like in his camp, and when the death-adder whizzed round to strike it, just struck wood, and the chap enjoyed his supper as usual that night. That chap had a wooden leg,” he added, unnecessarily explicit; and then his argument being nicely rounded off, he lent a hand with the pack-bags.

What happens on the night shift stays on the night shift

Oh lordy, the things that night shift gets you to do... We wrapped one of our colleagues up in a shroud and called the porters to pick her up and take her to 'Ward 13.' They were about to put the lid on the trolley when she sat bolt upright and screamed "Don't shut the lid." They bolted and took ages for them to talk to us again... But I still laugh uncontrollably 40 years later!!!