Quick shifts, night shifts, rotating shifts. How nurses cope

Nurses are one of the few professional groups who have all done shift work at some time during their career-whether they wanted to or not. For all shift workers, but perhaps most pointedly for women with family responsibilities, shift work can be either a blessing or a curse. Many nurses who work night shifts have found ways to combine work, leisure and family life, despite the fact that they work when the rest of the world sleeps, and vice versa. For other nurses changing rosters and long blocks of night shift are an unwelcome imposition on a 'normal' life, yet one which they have no control over.