to sleep during my break on the night shift?

[TupperwareTwat]

After 5 years of getting away with working lates, earlies and long days only, I have this week started mandatory rotation on to night shifts.
The NHS trust I work for now requires day shift workers to do a minimum of 4 weeks of nights per year and vice versa for night shift workers.
I began my 12 hour shift at 8pm on Monday. At 2am the Sister asked me if I would like to go for my break (1 hour unpaid). I told her that I would like to go somewhere to sleep and she said that we are not allowed to sleep during our break in case anything happens and we are needed.
I asked her what we are supposed to do on our 'break'. She told me that she takes a book and reads for an hour.
I took a book and a blanket and my coat to the rest room, pushed 4 stand chairs together, led down and rested my eyeballs for an hour. The Sister came knocking on the door after an hour and I got up and staggered back to work while she went for her break. I felt relatively fantastic after my sleep.
When I told DH about this he said I should not have told her I was going to sleep on my break, and that I could get sacked for this.
I don't believe that my employers should even expect me to remain on the premises on my unpaid break!
Or am I being unreasonable?

I think there is a big difference between closing your eyes as you sit in a chair in the common room to bedding down with a blanket. The type of power naps that are found to be beneficial mean you never enter that deep sleep state which is harder to be roused from. I hated waking people who had fallen asleep on nights because it feels cruel but when they oversleep and don't return from their break on time, take the piss and use empty beds and generally impact on the other staff, it just isn't fair. It would take a monumental effort from the unions and a long, drawn out legal battle to get change I imagine and ultimately there are probably larger issues which should be addressed first.

PeanutButterCupCake It depends what kind of ward it is. I work in labour ward. Staff can't walk away from a birth for instance to answer the phone. If the other staff are dealing with an emergency, and they happen ALL the time in a busy labour ward, then who else is going to do it? Staffing issues are a major headache for people like me trying to keep the place safe and give staff the breaks they are due. No matter how many memos, complaints, incident forms and meetings we have had, nothing tangible changes.

What would happen to someone who refused to work as they were on their (unpaid) break?

Then let the phones go unanswered. Recruiting people on their breaks to answer them is just playing into management's hands. Stop talking and start acting.

you end up with tragedies like this

It's your break and you are not paid for it so I don't think it's anyone else's business what you do with it.

Breaks for NHS staff are a vexed issue though aren't they? I used to do either 0700-1930 or 1900-0700 on a very very busy and understaffed ward and it was rare I even got to have a wee before about 3pm if I was on days. We would try and have a pot of tea in the day room about 6pm after patient's evening meals so that we could catch up on paperwork and be easy to find for relatives and friends who wanted to ask about patient care, and it was normal for that to be the first time we had sat down or eaten anything all day.

I have NEVER worked in any department where it is the norm to take all your breaks and leave work on time. This is not paid or given back in lieu.

I have forced doctors to go sit down and eat a sandwich and then lied about their whereabouts for five minutes so they could at least eat.

The internet is full of scathing comments about the midwives on OBEM "sitting about drinking tea and eating cake" - they are entitled to breaks you know and often don't get them!

If there are problems because of staff being unavailable due to being off somewhere/asleep on an unpaid break then this is not the fault of the staff, its the fault of the employer. If staff are needed to be on call during break, they should be paid. End of.

Where there's a will, there's a way.

YANBU you should be able to do what you like on your break. I would probably feel worse after only an hours sleep though than none at all

Legally speaking with respect to the break, if it's unpaid, you can do what you like.

However, it also appears that they can stop you leaving the premises, providing that they have a system to make up any lost break time, and prevent you sleeping on the premises

www.frettens.co.uk/blog/2011/01/is-an-interrupted-rest-break-for-a-nurse-on-call-time/
www.therevcounter.com/general-mayhem/23542-night-duty-unpaid-breaks-sleeping.html

Contactr your union.

I'm an nhs night worker.

We don't get paid breaks so in theory can leave the premises, doze, read etc.

In reality, we rarely get any breaks at all despite not being paid and we are rarely off on time.

We do not get paid for all this extra time, nor do we ever get it back in lieu.

There is a MASSIVE amount of evidence that night workers who have a 20 minute sleep during their shift are far safer than those who haven't. A sleep is the SAFE and RESPONSIBLE option.

www.nhsemployers.org/Aboutus/Publications/Documents/Unsocial%20hours%20and%20night%20working.pdf

Haven't managed to read the links but u am an nhs worker. Our 'shifts' are 16.5hrs long and we used to rest for a few hours if there were no patients. This was known by management, and not a provlem in fact there is an on call bedroom for this purpose. We have now been told we cannot use the bedroom or sleep. Surely a 16.5 hr shift is illegal? We have no rotad breaks as its impossible due to type of work we do x

DH often goes and naps in the car in his lunch hour, I would feel awful afte an hours sleep but it makes him feel refreshed.

Surely when day staff take breaks they go to the canteen, shop/fruit stall wherever, so even if the don't leave hospital premesis they leave the ward?

YANBU. It would be different if they were paying you for it.

And if something went wrong that needed an extra staff member, how is that in any way the off-duty nurse's fault? It's the fault of the Trust for not having adequate staff cover.

ENormaSnob, may I ask why do you put up with that?

It seems very unfair that people like yourself and the OP are treated so poorly.

My last post disappeared so I'll try again.
For the record, I have never asked a colleague to come back from a break to answer the phone. They come out of the staff room themselves, as do I.
I have had to ask colleagues to cut short their break to look after, for example, a woman who has come in pushing, bleeding or fitting. It happens more frequently than you might imagine.
None of my colleagues has refused but they often grumble and I don't blame them. If by some miracle we have a quiet night then I will try to let someone go early but that's not very often.
As I explained in a previous post I, and others, have asked repeatedly from help from management. We have had countless meetings. I fill in incident reports for the quality and safety department. I have informed the health authority. I have asked the Consultants to support us. This was all in a previous life as I am now overseas and nothing is any different here.
Nothing changes because they say they don't have the money for more staff, the government does not see the problem and staff are too dedicated on the most part to refuse to respond.
We have professional responsibility as nurses and midwives and other HCP's to act in a manner which does not put the patient's at risk. I don't want to have to stand in front of the NMC or in a court to justify my inaction by saying "But I was on my break".
I realise that we are being taken advantage of but I would love to know what else we can do?
Bruxuer your comment about stop talking and start acting is simplistic in the extreme. Would you like to try to sleep at night knowing you had ignored a buzzer and someone was seriously injured or died because of your inaction. If it was your baby who was not resuscitated or you who gave birth on your own or you who had a stroke because your blood pressure wasn't monitored properly - would you be so blase?

I work nights and have the same issuesl. The way I think of it is If they don't want to pay me for my break then they have absolutely no business telling me what I do in it.

what trafficwarden said. I have been asked "oh why don't you just put your coat on at hometime and go" - well, if I'm leaning on someone's femoral artery so they don't bleed to death it's not that simple is it? And you HAVE to complete your paperwork properly, it's dangerous to leave without properly documenting what you've done and should something go wrong you would be up shit creek well and truly if you said "well, I did x but didn't document it because my shift had finished".

The NHS runs on goodwill/emotional blackmail. They know they have staff over a barrel because at the end of the day if we worked to rule the patients would suffer big time.

Management just tell you to fill in an incident form but that takes about 20 minutes and nothing ever changes so who can be arsed?

I meant to say, the paperwork thing - I am aware that a lot of relatives think all nurses/mws do is "sit on their arses doing paperwork". Yes, that is all I do from the time I should go home to the time I've finished it! I don't have enough time to fill it in during my shift. So there.

I am a public sector worker, and our break is unpaid. Therefore we are allowed to leave the premises, go to the shops, the gym, swimming, home (to sleep, or whatever grabs our fancy) whatever the hell we want, as our break is UNPAID.
IF we were paid during our breaktime, we would still be "on call".

You have every right to go to sleep during your unpaid break, and I'm sure you would be more productive for it.

And IF anything were to happen and you were needed urgently whilst you were on your break, I'm sure adrenaline, professionalism and years of training and working experience would see you through the drama.
Equally, if something happened after your break, you would be more alert to deal with it.
I worked nights in a nursing home way back when, and we all got our heads down for an hour on rotation.
It's your break, do what you want with it. As long as they know where to find you! :o

In the bad old days night staff had official timed breaks. We all went down to the canteen and had a HOT meal, and also went down and had breakfast.

Now canteens are not open at night. Wards manage breaks 'when it is quiet'. Well in my experience, it is never quiet. Staffing levels have gone down, patient dependency has gone up.

If you refuse to come off break to attend an emergency, it will be YOU, the registrant who is brought to the NMC, not the NHS hospital. It will be you who has that on your conscience if a patient died.

It's not right, and its going to get worse in light of the NHS and nurse redundancies (have 2 weeks before I know if I am going to be made compulsary redundant).

We can fill out as many incident forms as we want (nothing ever gets done about the staffing levels).

YANBU to want to sleep on your own time or even want a break in your own time, the NHS IBU not to have enough staff on hand to cope with people going on break.

YANBU.

You are not being paid, they can not tell you you can't sleep.

I do nights in the NHS and will happily sleep on my unpaid break. If there is an emergency and I heard the buzzer I'd go. Though the ward should be sufficiently staffed that they can cope with an emergency when one person is on a break. Obviously if the ward was short staffed I wouldn't take my break and I would claim for the whole shift.

Technically if you help with an emergency in your own time on your break you are not covered under the trust's insurance......so I've been told. I doubt they'd actually enforce that though.

And we're starting to be more militant at work now about making sure we get our breaks. We're leaving the ward and sitting in our cars to stop the problem of constantly been asked to go and do something when we're on a break.