Girlfriend can't sleep

[Neal Winkler]

My girlfriend started working nights as a nurse a couple of months ago, doing the 7pm to 7am shift 3 times per week. Now, on off days, she has trouble falling asleep at night.

Is there anything she can do?

[Steve Shafley]

Is it a set schedule, like S-M-T on W-Th-F-Sat off?

[Garrett Smith]

Figure out how to help her get out of the night shifts.

All I can say is that nurses, as a group, tend to be my sickest patients with the most uncommon presentations. Do I know why? No. It's just what I've seen, and I know other physicians who concur with that statement.

[Neal Winkler]

Steve, no it's not a set schedule.

Garrett, that's my wish as well, but wokring nights is what she was hired on for so she probably won't be able to get out of them for a while. The best I know to do right now is keep the room as dark as possible when she's sleeping.

[Steve Shafley]

Nurses = high demand.

Have her check around. Some hospitals in the Detroit area are even offering substantial signing bonuses (7-10K). I know you're not in that area, but nurses are in short supply everywhere.

[Paul Findley]

I worked nights. Tape tin foil to the windows, block the light around doors, get AC. Avoid the coffee/alcohol death spiral.

I lived in an apartment complex. They re-roofed the entire place that summer. one day I was woken with a WTF! the new neighbor below me turned out to be a freekin' chainsaw log sculpture artist in the courtyard below my bedroom window...WHY ME! ROFL.

[David Wood]

What the others said . . . totally black room. Cool air (run the a/c for a white noise effect). Try to get it to a regular schedule.

Expect to feel lousy and be sick until she gets off it. Unless she is one of the very few people who seem genetically "born" for this shift, it will suck.