The Night Shift

Nurse Alina prefers nights: the corridors dim, the monitors beep softly, and time belongs to patients, not paperwork. She checks drips, turns patients to prevent sores, and talks quietly with those who cannot sleep. Research shows night nurses make fewer interruptions and catch early warning signs others miss at handover. The cost is real: broken sleep raises blood pressure and shortens patience. Alina guards her rest with blackout curtains, morning runs, and a strict no-phone rule until noon. She says nights taught her that care is mostly presence: sitting beside a worried stranger until breathing slows. Hospitals are beginning to take the cost seriously. Some rotate staff forward, from mornings to evenings to nights, because the body adjusts more easily in that direction than backwards. Others use bright light in the ward at the start of a shift and dim it near the end to help people wake and sleep at the right times. Alina has tried the advice and adds her own rules: no coffee after three in the morning, a walk before bed, and a phone that stays in the kitchen. She also watches for signs in colleagues, because exhaustion shows first in small mistakes and short tempers. The ward functions, she says, because everyone covers for everyone, and because someone always brings food.