to find it difficult working 2 days per week?

[YorkshireNurse]

I work 2 days a week as a community mental health nurse and I am finding this very stressful in terms of keeping up with workload and expectations and catching up after my days off takes time. I never feel confident or competent in terms of being up to date with developments as there never seems to be enough time.

I have raised these issues at supervision but there doesn't seem to be a solution. I think about work all the time and feel responsible for my caseload even when not there.
Everyone always makes comments about how it must be lovely to work 2 days and it is in some ways but it makes doing my role very difficult and I am thinking of leaving nursing altogether.

My experience is that two days isn't enough, but three is manageable if you are prepared to catch up with email and so on on your days off. And be flexible to go in for the odd meeting. I have worked three days for twenty years.

I agree. I did 2 days for A bit and it wasn't a good balance. 3 did seem to.work better.

I worked two days as a community nurse, and gave up in the end. I didn’t feel I could practice safely when I could barely keep up to date with my mandatory training, let alone anything else. I was lucky that I was able to give up (now a SAHM), but am obviously sad at the loss of my career, giving up my registration etc. I just don’t think it is enough hours to keep on top of things in all honesty, and as far as I am aware, they won’t allow people to only work two days a week now in the area I worked.

I'm an AHP in the community and went from three days to full time for this very reason. We have to be on a trust site to do read/do patient notes so two mornings out of the three I had to start from the hospital (to read notes one day and attend MDT Meeting the next). On the third day I had to come back to base to notes as other teams would want to lock the office. Drove me nuts! I thought part-time would work for the role but it really doesn't. Gave up and went full time. Works much better as I don't miss out on anything and there is far more continuity. I don't have children though....

The difficulty that I found was that I had the same amount of mandatory training (and other crap) that a full timer had but had a third of the time. The previous full timer would always make little digs if I saw fewer patients than her during the day which didn't help either.

oldsewandsew, I am on the verge of giving up too.

Do you think you will ever go back to nursing? do you miss it?

Yanbu-I’ve heard similar from other PT workers in similar fields whereby they’re expected to get as much done as if they were FT. Plus mental health work must be draining. Anything working with people can be pretty draining tbh
What I find annoying being PT is the big gap between being in and then off and then in again which means stuff piles up. And then when you are in you think - I’ve only got two days to get this done.

YorkshireNurse, I am just within the time limit for returning to nursing if I wanted to, but I can honestly say I don’t want to. There are aspects I miss (the interaction with the patients, and colleagues, and also feeling as though I still have a brain and am doing something worthwhile), but none of that is enough to make me want to go back. I have no idea what I will do work wise when the kids are older, but sadly, I feel I got out of the NHS at a good time.
I don’t blame you for feeling like that at all. I felt a bit pathetic that I couldn’t ‘cope’ with two days, but I was feeling so out of touch with the job, and had no easy way to increase my hours.

I just feel that it's just not a suitable job for the number of hours I am able to do.
I feel that I'm no good at work and no good at home as I'm worrying about work!

Is there no way of organising childcare so you can work an extra day?

My neighbour did 2 days a week and found it really hard - never felt like part of the team, couldn't get into a routine because she was in so few days. Ended up giving up and is now a gym instructor which she loves.

If I were you then I'd see if you could go up to 3 days a week, even if it means you don't bring home any more income.

I work in a totally different field, but I found working two days a week was quite stressful. My work load was genuinely reduced accordingly but having five days off was long enough to forget about fine details you’d remember the next day and also for emails etc to build up. I felt like I was always chasing my tail. Even when I worked 4 long days I ended up increasing to 5 shorter ones so I wasn’t spending every Monday playing catch up from the previous week.

I see the other way. I job share with a colleague, I do 3 days, she does 2. Her reason for reducing was that she is near retirement and finds commuting difficult, also has health problems.

After one year I got really fed up with her work. She was ok with day-to-day stuff but everything which had a deadline was left behind and in the end when the deadline was on one of my days I had to finish it off even when I already did my share.

After our boss spoke to her it came out that she read all emails despite me already marking them off as done, even mundane stuff. I always wondered why she insisted on working on emails a whole morning when apart from the odd private one or something she worked on and could really wait everything was already done.

So, if you feel you have too much going on you need to see that work does not pile up. You get paid for 2 days, you shouldn’t have to work for 5. You need a proper buddy who also gives you a decent handover so you don’t have to re-read everything but jut the summary.

The idea to catch up with emails on the days off is ridiculous, yes u are not paid, why should your u check in.

My mum had this problem reducing from f/t to 3 days, in the end she did give up and move to working on the wards. Its tough but she said just not having the stress of being unable to keep up with her caseload has made all the difference.

I don't think 2 days is enough unless you are a proper job share. Crisis teams seem to be popular, lower staff turnover and people I know who work with CRHTT love it. It's shifts but no nights and no caseload.

Years ago I did 2 days a week when returning after maternity leave and within 6 weeks I was on nights as it was just too much stress. Stayed on nights for years but I had no life, looking after children and working weekends.

I never really took to nights but it did mean no childcare costs once the dses went to school. I finally finished nights when ds2 was 12 and haven't looked back. Love doing days and working full time is so much easier.

The summary of my ramblings is that it's shit and I sympathize. I'm just glad my children are older now. Nights did work for me but I hate them with a passion now and wouldn't recommend it long term.

Ooh I felt like I could’ve written this.
I’m a CPN, 2 days a week but slightly longer days (10 hours) and also in Yorkshire!
I feel ok with it but I do plan to up my hours once DCs are in school/have 30 funded hours. I find it ok tbh as the work/life balance works for me. We are a community team that operates 7 days a week so it’s quite common that people will have longer breaks even when working full time which I think helps.

An extra day wouldn’t be an option for me at the moment unless I did a weekend day. I don’t want to lose the time with the children when they are small as I have many years to work and progress my career if needed. I think keep voicing your concerns at supervision and make sure you are only allocated an appropriate level of work to suit your availability. Do you have a job share/someone to cover your clients when you’re not around?

It’s all a bit shit at the moment with ever increasing case loads and lack of funding. I hope you have nice colleagues and a supportive team ethos. I am lucky that I do which makes it magaeable.

It's not a job share, if it was it would probably work better I think.
I am probably guilty of overcaring but I find it difficult not too I guess.

It is always difficult working part-time but I think you also need to find a way of not letting it impact on your non-working days. You are not responsible for your caseload when you are not there and you should not be thinking about it all the time. Even if you worked 4 or 5 days a week, that would be the case.

Finding more effective ways to handover is something that would benefit everyone, though, and you should try to pursue that with colleagues as much as possible.

Just gave up my two day a week specialist role, it was a nightmare. On paper I was so over qualified for bits of it, in practice it was a young, predominantly male techy team and I was made to feel over the hill and completely useless. My boss was amazing but one guy in particular made my life hell. He was trying to be mr cool but was really like an incel and I was prime target. So hard to fight back against when so part time.

2 days is really tough. Day 1 is your first day back after nearly a week so you need to catch up on messages etc. Day 2 is your last day for nearly a week.

Can you do duty on both your days and not hold a case load?
Or does your team have an intake type function for new referrals?

I do something similar and find this much less stressful as they are not ‘my’ cases and I am responding to emergencies on the day, if the work carries over on duty then someone else runs with it.