I can't sleep at night. I'm a night person, always have been, so I worked night shifts all my life. My sister, also an RN, literally got sick when she tried to stay up all night, so she worked days.
Of course a nurse willing to work nights was always welcomed--being happy to have someone to work nights didn't translate into a better salary--though we did get some differential pay--but we also got less staff. For some reason hospital administration assumed not much happened at night.

No, patients don't bed down sweetly at night and wake up at dawn. Night is when pain is most acute, when blood sugar levels bottom out, when patients with breathing problems strangle for breath, and when life forces ebb to a low in the wee hours. Night shifts were when you heard the "Code Blue" calls to resuscitate dying patients.

But the reason I've been awake tonight is because I drank tea with one tiny little caffeinated Earl Grey teabag mixed in with a pitcher of decaf tea. So I stayed up till 2am watching "Frenzy" Alfred Hitchcock's last movie, on TCM. Then read some more of a good book I had started. Lay down and dreamed I was working a night shift where patients were calling for their meds, the phones were ringing, doctors were waiting for someone to make rounds with them--everything was going wrong. I'm glad I woke up after about an hour.

Can't sleep today though until after the plumber has come to fix the toilets he's been promising to come fix for a month. I think he's the one who needs to get a good dose of caffeine. susil