Sleep deprivation is a HOT topic in nursing circles. I’ve read several articles on its detrimental effects on your heart and your mind and this was just in the last two weeks.
Last week was a tough one. I worked nearly every damned day of my week. Considering that work consists of doing call cases, i.e. cases that come in the middle of the night, or hang on after the end of the day, that is a long week.
Back at it again at the beginning of this week. Sunday AND Monday.
Except for Thursday, those surgeons have had a hell of a time.
It was all one group too!
I told the last one of the set when I saw them on Sunday night that they must have had my bed monitored because I kept getting paged, or called just when I was putting my head on the pillow. I also referenced Pokemon and asked if, since I had the whole set, I had definitely caught them all.
I cannot stress how odd this is. A group of 8 and I’ve seen 6 of them, at night, in the last eight days. Weird.
But today the topic top of mind is sleep deprivation.
My sleep deprivation and how I handle it and processes that I’ve started to minimize it when I do sleep.
Mondays can be tough as discussed in last week’s Monday Musing 8/21/23, especially if I work all Sunday night. I have, believe me.
The first thing I do to combat Monday sleep deprivation starts on Sunday and it is simply a nap. I know that you can’t pre-save sleep in case you have a rough night and can’t sleep but I can try.
I nap on Sunday afternoon and go to bed at 2130 Sunday night. I do this with the intent of sleeping as much as I can, hopefully until the alarm goes off at 0515 to get up and get ready to drive the 90 minutes to the university. If I work, as I did this past Sunday, I go straight to bed as soon as I get back, again to sleep as much as I can until the alarm goes off. This past Sunday, I took the planned nap, and got into bed at 2130, after prepping my breakfast and my lunch for Monday.
There was a case and a page as soon as I pulled up the covers. That’s okay, I had gotten some sleep during the nap.
I was back in bed, case finished, by 0215.
After I checked the alarm was set to a slightly later time.
I slept from 0220 until my husband woke up to ask if I was going to the university that morning. He woke me up at 0527. My alarm was set to go off at 0540.
That is 13 minutes I’ll never get back.
Everyone knows the best sleep is right before the alarm.
Right?
I brushed my teeth, got dressed, grabbed my school satchel and my lunch, and left.
Spent a busy day doing research assisting stuff; editing an abstract, table edits, meeting with my new PhD nurse that I will be working for, doing budget-type things for another grant, and getting off an hour and a half early because I had finished everything asked of me.
Yay! Just in time to beat the 1700 traffic.
Got home 90 minutes later, diving straight into bed for another nap.
Because I go on shift at 2100 and I had a meeting at 1930 that I didn’t want to miss.
Wake me up Dot crawled into bed and cuddled because she hadn’t seen me all day. And purred herself to sleep.
If I am wrong about the quality of sleep with cat cuddles all I have to say is that YOU are wrong. I slept great for 70 minutes to wake up before my meeting.
All joking aside, sleep deprivation kills.
But I have a carefully constructed process to counteract it.
Including caffeine!
Tea and a Celsius drink and half a cold brew. I poured the rest out. I can’t stand coffee!
Dispatches from the Evening Shift 