Hospital Shift work advantages & disadvantages

 As an MLT at a general hospital, I work rotating shifts. Sometimes weekends and holidays too.

Working off-shifts such as evenings, nights, weekends or holidays has some perks 🙂:

-There's less traffic early in the morning or late at night so driving is much easier (BUT taking TTC is actually harder because of many service interruptions on weekends. The commute might actually be longer.)
-I would get some days off in the weekdays so I can make appointments or go to a bank or something during regular business hours without having to take a vacation day.
-Usually, workload is lighter than weekdays so I can take it easy.
-there's a teeny tiny shift premium 😅(just few dollars more per hour so not much difference)

Negatives are pretty obvious:
-working weekends mean I'm working a long stretch (e.g. Monday to Sunday) without a day off in between so it's tiring.
-cannot attend events or do things other people do on weekends so you would need to plan ahead and switch shifts as soon as possible!

All in all, it depends on your own lifestyle; I personally don't mind working these shifts 🫡

If I genuinely wanted to work Mon-Friday only and have weekends off, I could have tried switching departments (like Histology or specialized departments like Flow Cytometry or HLA) or apply for charge technologist position. It wasn't my priorities during my career so far but I can understand how others may think differently. 

Also, as I get older, working varying shifts may become more challenging for my physical and mental health so I will watch out for that. After all, my health is more important than a job.