If you don’t have enough staff, there’s no way of fairly sharing unsociable hours, says Nurse Practitioner Emma Harrison.

Before she was a Nurse Practitioner, Emma Harrison says her workload as an RN put an inordinate amount of stress on her family. “Because I was one of the more senior RNs in the facility, one year I worked 46 full weekends in 12 months.

“It got to a point where my husband said things had to change because we just weren’t seeing each other and I wasn’t seeing my kids. My daughter was at boarding school, and she would be home on the weekends and I would be at work. So, there were weeks when I would only see her for a couple of hours.

“It got to crisis point. My husband had some health issues, exacerbated by the fact that there was stress around me being gone all the time.”

Even though things have improved in her new role and since her days as an RN, it is still difficult to balance work and family life, Emma says.

“It’s very difficult because I live an hour and 20 minutes from where I work. I’ve got a daughter who’s in year seven, and she’s had a few awards lately, and I haven’t been able to go to those award ceremonies because I’d have to drive an hour and 20 minutes to get to the school and then the same to come back again.”

Emma says a lot of the older nurses she speaks to find it hard to maintain their former commitment to the job. “When you are constantly smashed by work and you are tired, it’s difficult to be empathetic and caring, and it’s not because you don’t want to and it’s not because you don’t care about people.

“It kills your enthusiasm, especially if your work conditions are rubbish. It’s hard to be enthusiastic about coming in and helping people and being the best nurse you can be when you’ve had two hours sleep.”

Staffing and work conditions lie at the core of the problem, she says. “If you don’t have enough staff, there aren’t people to cover. There’s no way of fairly sharing out the unsociable hours. And who wants to turn up and do unsociable hours for poor pay?”

Emma says that if we can make the workplace more family-friendly, “then we’ll have more people interested in doing it as a job”.

“But if we don’t, then we’re going to lose people to other professions. That’s already happening. We can’t fill positions, especially in rural areas. We are advertising positions repeatedly and not getting any applicants.”