Just How Do Nurses Do It?

By Brian Wallace, Business2Community.com
Special to Online Career Tips

To be successful in your career, it’s vital that you find and maintain a healthy work-life balance. But how do nurses do it? How do nurses balance work, family, going back to school and personal well being? Nurses can definitely be stretched too thin—they work more hours than their shift demands 81 percent of the time. On average, nurses work 49 minutes over scheduled hours, and the work doesn’t end there. About 19 percent of nurses work two or more jobs for multiple employers. They average only 6.7 hours of sleep on the days that they work.

Flexibility is what allows nurses to find and maintain balance. Nurses have the option to work in a variety of settings: 56 percent of all RNs work in hospitals, eight percent work in physician’s offices and five percent in home care. Nurses also enjoy tremendous flexibility in terms of their shift lengths, which include 12 hour, 10 hour, eight hour and four hour shifts. Completing longer shifts at once allows nurses to work fewer days in a week. Four hour shifts are actually becoming more common as baby boomers age. The average age of a nurse in the U.S. is 47.3 years.

Interested in going back to school? Learn more about the online RN to BSN program at APU.

How would you like to have the option to work every weekend and receive a higher rate of pay than you currently do? How about working without benefits for a higher rate of pay? Nurses have these options and more, and 76 percent of nurses are “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their jobs. To learn more about the life of nurses in the U.S., check out the infographic below presented by BestNursingMasters.com.

Image source: www.bestnursingmasters.com