Babbling About “Three Days Off”: The Truth About 12 Hour Shifts

#195: Think three 12s means a breezy four days off? We pull back the curtain on the nursing schedule everyone loves to glamorize and lay out what those days actually feel like: recovery that swallows time, errands that only exist during business hours, and the mental load of gearing up to do it again. From the first cup of coffee to the late-night charting sprint, we trace the unspoken timeline of a “12-hour” shift that too often stretches to 14 or 16.

We go beyond the TV version of nursing to show the layered reality: IT troubleshooting, de-escalation, family communication, lab interpretation, and rapid coordination—on top of meds, assessments, and documentation that has to be right. We talk pay myths, why overtime isn’t a perk, and how the post-pandemic spotlight dimmed even as shortages intensified. You’ll hear how circadian rhythms get scrambled, cortisol stays high, and meals turn into quick bites between alarms, plus the quiet strain on holidays and relationships when your life runs on a different clock than everyone else’s.

There’s nuance too. Some nurses thrive on twelves; others prefer eights or tens. The constant is the need for better ratios, real breaks, flexible scheduling, and pay that respects responsibility. We share why we still choose the work—the teamwork, the purpose, the privilege of helping on someone’s worst day—while being honest about what must change to keep nurses at the bedside. If you’ve ever wondered whether three days on and four off is a dream or a myth, this conversation gives you the language and context to answer clearly.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: Three 12s
• 1:52 Myth One: “Four Days Off”
• 5:20 Myth Two: “It’s Just 12 Hours”
• 12:04 What Nurses Actually Do
• 13:57 [Ad] PodMatch
• 14:34 (Cont.) What Nurses Actually Do
• 16:11 Myth Four: “The Money Is Great”
• 22:46 The 12-Hour Emotional Timeline

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

What is up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode of the Babbles Nonsense podcast. This is the podcast where we tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, especially when someone clearly doesn't understand your job. So today we are talking about the biggest scam in nursing culture, which is the three-day work week, the 12-hour shifts. Because if one more person would have said to me, it must be nice only to work three days when I was still nursing staff in the hospital, I would literally go insane. Like honestly, you all should just chart them as non-compliant and move on with your life. Just kidding. Don't do that. But let's get into the real life of 12-hour shifts, where your only personality traits are caffeine, trauma bonding, and compression socks. But I'm going to get into what I remember about it, kind of the difference on what, like I've kind of worked it all. I've done eight-hour shifts, nine-hour shifts, 10-hour shifts, and 12-hour shifts. So kind of done it all. So we can also discuss that towards the end of the podcast, but want to get into some myths that I remember people saying to me as I work 12-hour shifts and kind of going through that motion. And again, guys, this is just my experience. Some people really love the 12-hour shift, and that is okay. So we're just going to jump into the myths. Um, myth number one is when people say you have four days off. That's like a mini vacation every week. Um, let's just, and of course, like myth number one and myth number two kind of go hand in hand because myth number two is about the hours that you work. No one's really working 12 hours, like you're having to, you know, commute to and from. And that can't, well, I'll get into that in myth number two. But, anyways, um, so you're really working long hours where you don't have time after work to do something. Let's say for you forgot something from the grocery store. You may not be able to get that for, you know, until day four or five when you're off. Um, I know there's things like Instacart and all that now, and I completely understand that, but there's also shifts where like, let's say you're working night shift and you're working 7p to 7A, you're not trying to have someone Instacart something because even if you put in the comments, please don't ring doorbell, they still do. You're not trying to be woke up during the day. Or if you're working like 9A to 9P, you don't want your groceries sitting there on a hot summer day in the south where they're gonna spoil. So there's there's nuances to it. But, anyways, when you're working three days and you're working long shifts where everything's closed when you get off work and you just honestly want to do nothing but go home and just either decompress or get in the bed and just do it all again the next day. This is like kind of like what someone's days may look like on their off days. So, like day one, let's say you worked three in a row. Day one may be recovering from the shift that nearly ended you. And trust me, if you don't know what that means, like there are so many days. Like, sure, are you don't always have stressful times, but majority, well, I'm and I guess I'm my my experience is in the ER. So I'm thinking like ER critical care, but I feel like this can relate across the board because I just feel like the stress in nursing is definitely going up as the as patients get sicker, and y'all can all read about that, like baby boomers are now getting sicker, and so now we have more patients than nurses, yada yada yada. But anyways, day one is that you know, when you're off work, you're just recovering, you're decompressing, you're trying to just get the will to get up again, if you will. So it's like you don't want to talk to pretty much anyone if people call you, you're not answering the phone, you're just texting them back and saying, hey, don't really feel like talking right now, or you're like just zoning out in front of the TV on something that is not definitely doesn't require critical thinking. So probably something like reality TV, you can have it on in the background, you don't really have to pay attention. Day two may look like, okay, now I can get up, I've decompressed, you know, I'm reset, so I'm gonna go run my errands because everything you needed to do was closed while you were dying inside at work. Like things like your hair appointments, doctor's appointments, parent-teacher conferences, cleaning, cooking, laundry, any kind of meeting that you need to set up for. Maybe you're trying to look for another job and you're trying to do job interviews, or maybe you want to go to the gym and take care of yourself. Um, but before you know it, you've done all those things on your errand day while you've had the energy to do it, and then your day is gone. And then day three, you're usually mentally preparing to go right back into the chaos. And then you have that day four where you're like, okay, I have a day off. What does anybody want to do? And then most of the time, most of the time, your friends are working nine to fives, you're off, so you have nothing to do. And by the time they get off work, they're like, no, don't really want to do anything. I've worked all day. So if you're not getting the weekends off, which nurses work seven days a week, 24-7, because hospitals don't stop, then you're usually missing out on time with your friends on that day that you're ready to hang out. Um, but yeah, four days off, it's more like one day off between two rounds of hell. So just remember that the next time you tell a nurse you only work three days a week. Myth number two, 12 hours isn't that long. Y'all, reality is going to hit so hard. And if you're married to a nurse, you have nursing friends, you know that 12 hours is not that's what's on paper, right? So 12 hours is on paper, but let's actually talk about what it is. Most of the time, you have to show up 20 to 30 minutes early so that you can get report from the shift going off so that they can leave on time. Or you're staying an hour late because charting is basically our part-time job and no one wants to be sued. Remember, if it wasn't charted, it didn't happen. So charting is such a huge thing where you have to do it. And if you didn't, if maybe you were too busy or it was one of those crazy days and you didn't get to chart during the day, and you've literally got notes everywhere, paper, your hands, your scrubs, then you have to stay and chart that because the next shift has to know what you did. And nurses are hourly employees, we're not salary. You don't get to go home and then chart. And then the last one, just for an example of why those hours turn so long, is that some nurses, well, probably majority of nurses, stay late because a patient turned critical right at shift change. And nurses can't just, you know, look at the new nurse, dab them up, shake their hand, and say, good luck. We have to stay. We know about the patient, we know what's going on. You're not going to give report in the middle of someone turning critical because every second matters and you know, every decision matters in that moment, and you have to think critically. You're not only thinking about what's going on in the moment, you have to then think 10 steps ahead, and you're not trying to do that and give report. You know, I've worked desk jobs, office jobs, hospital jobs. Like I have a desk job now, and if I don't finish charting and I'm like, you know what, I'll just pick that up tomorrow morning. You can't do that with a critical patient. You can't just say, oh, can you just stay exactly where you are and just let me come back in the morning and finish this? No. So those 12 hours, you know, or yeah, those 12 hours that everyone's like, oh, you just do 12 hours three days a week, it's like, no, really, they turn into 14 or 16 hours and they're just dressed up in a 12-hour costume. And if you think that's just anecdotal, just remember that research shows nurses working 12 plus hours or rotating shifts have significantly increased risk of burnout compared to eight-hour shift employees. And those nonstop hours aren't just exhausting, they're literally changing our bodies. Did you know that nurses working rotating shifts show elevated cortisol and prolactin levels compared to day shift nurses? Which explains why our stress feels physical, not just emotional. So just remember that the next time you tell someone, oh, it's just 12 hours, because it's not just a 12 hours where you can also, I didn't mention this earlier, just walk away and take a break. You know, it's not just always sitting around the desk and just talking. Some 12-hour shifts are literally nonstop, go, go, go, go, go, trauma after trauma after trauma, patients, you know, declining after declining. And all you want to do is just take a sip of water or go to the bathroom or maybe eat some food to keep this going, but we don't think about that. Like it just becomes robotic at that point, and you stop thinking about those things or caring about them because it's someone else that you have to care about in that moment. So this is just kind of off topic, but I no, actually, I'll put that at the end. But, anyways, myth number three nurses just take vital signs and give medications. So, how hard can your job actually be? The reality, the reality of it is that nursing staff are more than just nurses, which you know these medical shows do a horrible job at explaining what nursing staff actually does. You got people out here thinking that it's like Gray's Anatomy and the doctors are doing everything and greeting the patients and meeting them at the trauma bay and all this other stuff, which is way out of touch with reality. That's why I did a whole series on um the news show. Now I can't think of it, of course, brain dump. Um, anyways, I'll think I'll hopefully think of it. But, anyways, um, nursing staff will be anywhere from IT support, housekeeping, de-escalation experts, emotional support humans, customer service for the entire family tree. And occasionally we get to play nursing staff, you know? And if you're a nurse practitioner, then you know that you're scribing, you're also IT support, housekeeping, doing nursing tasks, but also doing provider task. And somehow we're doing all of that while still being expected to chart every breath or word a patient utters. So just remember that nursing, nursing isn't just doing what doctors order, and they're not just um task-based. You also have to have critical thinking skills. You also have to move in a timely fashion. You also have to think one step ahead and anticipate what your provider wants. You also have to, you know, be able to interpret radiology in labs and know if something's critical to go report to the provider because maybe you're the only person standing there watching the labs come through and you notice something critical before your provider does. So it's a very, you know, tedious and important task, all while still doing those other things, like fixing your computer, you know, listening to a family member that's very upset about what's going on in the hospital or trying to translate what the provider just said to the loved one or the family. It's so many things, and it's again not what the medical shows are showing you. Myth number four, the money must be really good. So the reality of that is shockingly, nurses are very underpaid, especially where I live in the South. Um, nurses can have anything between a two-year, four-year, six-year, eight-year degree, depending on if you know they have associates, bachelor's, master's, or postmaster's, and maybe even a doctorate. And most nurses I know where I'm from and located work two jobs or pick up extra shifts just to make ends meet. And sure, there are way exceptions to this. Like if you're listening to this in a different area, you know, geography definitely matters whether there's nursing shortages, strikes, pandemic travel rates, et cetera. Um, but what about those who have a family and can't leave their area or they're stuck in the moment that they're in? I think we all like I think maybe what opened everyone's eyes around this myth was during COVID when they they titled it the year of the nurse. You know, I think it sh shed a light on what nurses kind of go through. And people are like, what do you mean they're not getting to eat? And let's send pizzas to them and let's do this and let's honor our nursing staff. But how quickly that faded. How quickly like once COVID, you know, the era of that was over, everybody wants to forget it. We quietly forget that your nursing staff is still there doing the same job that they've always done. And then you add a pandemic on top of the job where we're already underpaid, we're already understaffed, and now, you know, you have this huge pandemic blow up. And and again, like I said, that did shed some light on it. But then of course everybody's like, well, they shouldn't care. They're making great money because everybody needed nurses at that time, right? Like it was such a huge nursing shortage because like areas like New York and bigger cities were experiencing, you know, a significant number of deaths and people coming to the emergency rooms and all that. And so, yes, you had to raise your pricing to pay these nurses to leave their family, you know, for weeks at a time. They were, you know, they were being asked to work seven days in a row, 20 days in a row, you know, 13, 14, 15 hour shifts. And so it's just like, of course, they got paid what they got paid during that time. Um, not to mention at the time risking their own life if they caught this virus and they they couldn't then go back home if they had children or a husband or a wife or you know, a significant other sitting there because they didn't want to infect them, or maybe they lived with elderly grandparents, or you know, there was just so many things. But once that was over and everything kind of went back to quote unquote normal, no one thought, like, oh, let's still continue to respect our nursing staff and treat them well and pay them well and you know, maybe not work them as hard. No, it just went back to the way it was. And, you know, I would say I'm not again, I'm not in the hospital now because I left after COVID because that is what did me in. And I the people that I still talk to are like, yeah, if anything, it may be a little worse now because the shortage is, I think after COVID, a lot of people left the healthcare field just because of how much engrueling it was. And that left them shorter with still the same amount of sick people and the way healthcare is going in this country, it's likely only gonna get worse. So we're not gonna talk on that. But to end that myth, like uh just remember overtime isn't a perk. It's sometimes survival because maybe it's a single mom and they can't survive on their nursing, you know, um, salary alone, which I know everyone's like, what? But just look it up, look in the areas, and you'll see what I'm talking about. But let's just okay, now we're shifting away from the myth, and now let's talk about how working 12 hours can turn into an emotional timeline. I want to kind of give examples of how maybe some nurses may be feeling um during that 12 hours. So stage one, hour one. We walk in, we're caffeinated, moves are high, we're feeling like heroes, we're feeling like Florence Nightingale, reincarcinated, and we're ready to go. Then stage two, hour four comes around and we're like looking at our watches. Why have we walked eight miles already? I have had no water, I haven't sat down, I haven't used the bathroom, why does my back hurt? Why is my mouth so dry? And these things are going through your head only at hour four. Then hour eight hits. You just looked at the clock thinking it must be close to shift change, thinking, oh my gosh, I feel like I've been here 12 hours, and it's just your lunchtime. Anyone, anyone can relate? You know, two admits may be rolling up like it's a party, and you're just like, all I want to do is eat some food. Hour 11 comes around, you're starting to get that charting migraine, you're speed typing like it's the MCAT, your will to live is now below baseline, and you're praying that nothing critical happens before the next shift comes on board because all you want to do is just get home and you're counting down the clock, and every time you look up, it's just been 30 seconds past or a minute past, and you're just like, why has time literally been standing still? Then at your hour 12 plus, you're trying to give report, you're finishing your med passes, and you're trying not to cry. Then you clock out 45 minutes late and call that leaving on time, and you're super excited about that, and you run like the Dickens to your car so that no one can be like, Hey, by the way, we're short. Does anybody want to stay? So that is kind of what it's like in our brains when we're looking at the clock. It's not always like that. Some days you're having really good days, maybe it's not as as of a busy day, and you actually do get to catch up with some friends because you know that's where you spend all your life. Um, but the last thing I want to kind of talk about is no one really talks about the toll that nursing actually takes on you emotionally and physically. So let's talk about those 12 hours and what they do to your life. So, like your sleep schedule, it pretty much becomes non-existent. Shift work, like if you're doing night, when I say shift work, if you're not a nurse, that means like doing night shift. So shift work disrupts the body's normal cortisol rhythm, which controls your wake cycles and your metabolism. And sleeping is just so important for, you know, rejuvenating the body and the brain and the gut health and all those things. Um, your hormones, they become chaotic. High cortisol doesn't always drop when you clock out, it stays elevated, causing inflammation, cravings, autoimmune diseases. Um, then then let's then there's the holidays. You know, you're at work while your loved ones or your friends and family are are at a Christmas party or Thanksgiving dinner and you're just sitting at work, you know, missing out on those memories. And then relationships, you can pretty much forget that. I'm not gonna say forget that people obviously sustain hap happy marriages, but relationships are harder because when someone asks you to hang out and you're just like, oh, I can't that day, I can't that day, I can't that day, I gotta work, or maybe you have to work the next morning and you're like, I can't that night, I have to be up at five in the morning to get to work. Some people don't understand that. Or if you did work three 12s in a row, it's time to decompress. So you want to kind of cut off the mind for a little bit and go into hibernation mode and not talk to anyone because you've talked to maybe 500 people in the past three days and you're just a little burnt out and need that time. Or, you know, things that I have ran into, like that's all you that's what your life becomes about talking about. You're like, oh my gosh, let me tell you about this, or this was cool. And then maybe that other person doesn't really want to hear it or they're grossed out by medical stuff. So it can become a little difficult when it comes to relationships and then food. That's where granola bars and ivy bag coffee, you know, becomes your best friend because nurses frequently skip actual meals and most of the time rely on high sugar, high fat snacks because a quote unquote lunch break is a mythical concept when it comes to working, especially in these high critical areas, or you're just trying to eat in five minutes, and you know, if you forgot if you forgot your lunch or didn't feel like meal prepping, then you have to get what's close to the hospital. And usually those aren't the healthiest options, but you're always trying to grab something that can be very quick. But with all that being said, like our adrenal glands deserve a purple heart, in my opinion, because patients pour trauma into us all shift long, and then someone will literally ask, Why are you tired? You only worked three days. Just remember to take a deep breath and don't hit them. And it's not just drama, it's data, guys. Shift working nurses consume more sugary drinks, have higher stress, and a higher obesity risk than nurses on regular days. Our bodies are literally fighting a war we didn't enlist for. And it can go back to the fight or flight. Like, if you don't know about cortisol regulation, I won't bore you here, maybe for another prop podcast. But that's why a lot of people have a hard time, you know, switching in and out. Like you can kind of do it at the beginning, but like, and I've talked about this on past podcasts, but like you start becoming that highly anxious, and I don't want to say like anxious out, like maybe not outwardly, but like your brain is just constantly thinking, what if, what if, what if this could lead to this, could lead to this. And it's kind of hard sometimes to turn it off when you step outside of the shift. So why do we keep doing it? Because despite everything, nurses are just built different. We love the teamwork, the adrenaline, the privilege of helping someone on their worst day. And I do believe that we genuinely want to change lives. But also, if they want nursing staff to keep saving lives, I think that nurses should be given better ratios, breaks, and a paycheck that doesn't require a side hustle or large amounts of overtime. Wouldn't that be nice? So the next time someone says, Wow, three days on, four days off, you're so lucky. Just send them this episode and a pair of you scrubs to just be like, here you go, this explains everything. But seriously, guys, thank you for listening to me babble about the good old work days. And even though sometimes y'all hear us complain about it, we still love it. We love it at the end of the day because I know someone goes, Well, you chose that life. We did, we did choose this life. And it's not that it's, you know, like I said, I would mention at the end, it's not all bad. Um, I didn't mind the 12 hours. I've worked 12 hours, eight hours, nine hours, 10 hours, like I said at the very beginning of the episode. And sometimes I do miss 12 hours when I'm doing, I'm doing four 10-hour shifts right now. And some days I don't have, like, I will book my Wednesday solid of appointments and stuff because most places are closed on the weekend when it comes to like doctor's appointments, dentist appointments, things like that. And some days I'm like, I would just love to have one day of downtime to be able to do everything. And so it's it's all nuance, it's all what you want, it's all preference, um, but there is burnout in it. And I know I've done an episode of Menu on burnout culture, and so there is burnout in it, and we are already down nursing staff. So the statistics say that some sources estimate a nationwide deficit of about 295,800 nurses in the U.S. And that's as of 2025 in terms of demand versus supply. And then it says that by 2030, the U.S. is projected to face a shortfall of over 500,000 registered nurses, according to one fact sheet. And on the global level, the World Health Organization reports that the nursing workforce grew from 27.9 million in 2018 to 29.8 million in 2023. But significant geographic disparities remain and many countries still face major shortages. And then nursing education has become bottlenecked. Many qualified applicants are turned away from nursing programs due to insufficient faculty, clinical placements, classroom space, all the things. So just remember that we've got to work with what we have. We don't want to have these new nurses come in and be already burned out by year one. So the only way to do that is to continue to talk about it, educate, and get people involved. All right, guys, until next time. Bye.