AIBU to ask why emergency services staff work 12 hour shifts?

[Cuppaand2biscuits]

I'm just watching Ambulance on BBC 1 and appreciating the incredible work of our paramedics.
Just wondering why in such a physical and emotionally exhausting job do they work 12 hour shifts?
Same in midwifery, nursing, police etc.

As a manager, continuity of care over the week is worse. Nurses are working fewer days so they have good continuity for a day, but for a unit where patients may be in for 2-3 weeks it is really challenging.

However it is much cheaper, staff get lots of days off in the week and no time is wasted having a lengthy handover in the middle of the day when no work gets done.

Better work/life balance for me.

I hate it and am exhausted but I’m not sure how I would manage Monday to Friday 9-5 either!

(My phone wanted to change balance to balls )

When I was in hospital recently, I was talking to a staff nurse about her long shifts. She said it was great. Her husband also worked in the hospital and was on 12 hour shifts too.

The big benefit for her was that they could arrange for their shifts to always be on different days, and had had 3 children without needing to pay for childcare. They’d saved a fortune compared with other couples.

I do 12.5 hr shifts in healthcare and have previously worked in other areas that do 8.5 or 10.5 hr shifts. Much prefer the 12.5 hours despite the tiredness - I work in critical care and have found the fewer handivers there are, the less likely things are to get missed. Two a day instead of three is much better for patient care in my experience.

Another problem with 8 hour shifts (realistically 8.5 hrs to allow for handover) is with 24 hour cover you end up with a lot more antisocial shifts. So hypothetically staffing might be split into 0600-1430, 1400-2230 and 2200-0630. Most people would rather work a shorter number of long days than work like that.
A+E can be worse because of the need to concentrate doctors at peak times so you end up doing lots of late evenings, nights and weekends.

More days off! I work part time. I can do 2 shifts a week.

Believe me they work longer than 12 hours as they never ever get finished on time.

I’m not NHS or anything but I know if I was working a night shift at any job I would want it to be 12 hours 3x a week rather than 8 hours 5x a week. Absolutely.

When I was a carer I much preferred 3×12hr days to working 5 days a week. I done 8-4 or 2-10.

I do five night/late shifts in a row. It’s a killer.

Yep I would imagine so! It must be verging on cruelty asking people to work 5 night shifts in a row.

Nah, not cruelty just hard going the older you get, especially when you throw courts in amongst it as well.

@Bondi I've signed up for 20 in a row over the summer.

It's a major reason why the NHS is haemorrhaging older staff.

At 56, my Trust is trying to force me into 12.5 hour shifts (and nights...!). I am not a nurse, but a frontline HCP.

However, research clearly demonstrates that long shifts, let alone 'night shift'- damages your health.

I am nonplussed that this decimation of Family Life has been normalised to the point where people are applauding 12 hour shifts (which are actually 12.5hr, as 12.5 x 3 = 37.5hrs, most HCPs contracted hours; add a 30 min unpaid break, live a 30 min drive away, and that's 14 hours away from your H, P and/or DC.

How did we reach the point where HCPs embrace this? Days off, alone, as the DC are at school/college, DH/P is, like, (still), the vast majority, doing '9-5'. Where 'togetherness' is a 👋 in the hallway.

The 'youngies' love it! All that time off! Then come, weeping to me, 5 years later upon discovering childcare isn't 14 hours a day. Thus they have to take a pay cut to a 'lesser' job to do 9-5.

And the sickness rate is horrifying! Try backfilling night shifts when everyone else is exhausted, partly due to the walk-out of older staff.

Finally, I do not believe we give the same care to our 36th patient as we did our 3rd of that day.

20?? Why???

I used to sometimes work 10 nights in a row. 7 nights on 6 off was normal. It wasn’t unheard of back in the day to have a run of 12 day shifts, scattered earlies and lates with no pattern. Was horrible. Especially when younger and friends were 9-5 Mon to Fri.

The Joy's of being on a zero hours contract with security. However that's all I'll work that month. So it's like 240 hours over the month. I used to do 180 when working full time but that was mon to fri with only weekends off.

That one is something like the 9th till 26th July.

Gosh, we could only dream of 12 hour shifts when I was a junior doctor 36 years ago!
We worked up to 120 hours a week, and over our weekend on (Friday morning to Monday evening continuously) we worked an 80 hour shift. On the old infamous 1:2 rota, that was every second weekend, as well as working every week day and two week nights.
We were so tired we used to fall asleep in our dinners, hallucinate on the wards and in some cases crash our cars falling asleep at the wheel.
I’m glad shifts now are so much more civilised.

I can't believe the unions fought tooth and nail to shorten the working day, and here we are, applauding the lengthening if it.

Occasionally I do read MN posts about DC who are straying, losing their way, read how the parent/s 'work shifts', 'because they have to' and ponder how many of those shifts are hours on end so the DC are effectively alone.

I am not blaming the parents (well, not all) if the job had no 9-5 option, but choosing 3 x 13/14 hours away from your DC over 5 x 8.5 hrs, daytime, has got to be part of the issue.

It’s swings and roundabouts though. I pick up and drop off from school which I could jr do if I worked day time. And generally speaking I enjoy my job despite the hard shifts

Couldn’t do!

If I do 3×12hr shifts her dad is there and same when its him. We dont work at the same time and if we do my parents are looking after her.

However she is only 2 so wouldn't be left anyways.

Policing don’t generally do 12 hours shifts as far as I know. They do early, late and nightshift. I’m not aware of any forces that only do day and night shifts.

The met police do 12 hour shifts.

Officers and civilians. They tried to change to 3x 8 shifts a few years back and it all fell apart. They went back to days and nights.

more Thanks for clarifying, obviously it’s hard to be specific when there are so many forces.