Is Nursing family friendly?

[The sooper nanny]

I'm an RN/RM and I've always said that hospitals need to start pulling their fingers out and offering family friendly hours, it's no wonder people are leaving the profession
If they offered shifts say from9-2 or 3-11pm they would have so many more options. And people would be happier
My workplace do a floater shift frim8pm-2am which is very popular with mums.
But it is hard with family and shifts, especially if you're a single mum.
A lot of the mums I know do nights and weekends. I guess it depends how old your children are etc.
Good luck in whatever you decide

[HarvestMoon]

Wow where do you live? I'm in Perth and the situation is nowhere near as desperate as that. Rn training is a lot harder,it's three years as opposed to en training which is only 18 months..

I'm in Newcastle. I don't know why demand is so great here or why they don't offer more places because of that demand? I'm looking into doing a cert 3 at TAFE so i can get a taste of it but even that has an application progress and limited spaces.

I relise the RN training would be harder. Thats what scares me. I would rather take it in small steps; TAFE cert, TAFE diploma then possibly UNI. At least i would get credit towards the course then and have some experience under my belt.

[Jensha]

Ive had so many people say to me that nursing is more family friendly once you get employment so this does concern me. I was told that once you get through the placements you can have more say in what shifts you work. I would be happy to work the 7am-3.30 would be perfect for me though. I'm a single mum too but would just use before school care. Also the 1pm-9.30 would be ok if I re-partnered.

ETA - That is what im doing too HarvestMoon. I'm starting with Diploma of enrolled nursing at tafe. Then I will either gain employment as an EN and work for awhile. Or study the RN at uni straight after while working part time or just the bachelor on its own. And eventually midwifery.

[Bluest Blue Box]

I replied in your other thread too but no, I don't think it's family friendly. Shift work just plain sucks. You can negotiate family friendly hours with your manager but like pp said people b!tch behind your back. I know because before child I'd be p'd off that some people could ALWAYS leave work early or whatever.

For family friendly options within nursing you could look at day procedure, outpatients clinics, gp offices. I worked in aged care as an EN and there were some short shifts at the nursing home like 7-11/12 or 5-9. If you're in a hospital ward and you have a short shift like 7-1 you end up having to do the same amount of work as if you were working to 3:30 I've found.

I really, really don't want to put you off because good nurses are hard to find. I'm just being honest. I'm negotiating my return to work on a surgical ward and it's going to be bl00dy hard.

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[Mopoke]

If you were to do community health it's generally 8-430. But you would most likely need to be an experienced nurse to do that job. Places like practice nurses in go clinics would prob require a fair bit of experience as well.

Hours vary from hospital to hospital. Ours are 7-330, 230-11, 1045-715 and a short shift 7-11am. Sometimes there is 130-10

Not sure it it's the same for all unis but I think with une the nursing degree is 3 years but if you drop out after 2 you qualify as an en