4 A.M.: Nurses keep busy during the night shift at CMCH

For most students, 4 a.m. Saturday is a time to go out and finish the night off with a snack.

For nurses at Central Michigan Community Hospital, 1221 South Drive, 4 a.m. falls in the middle of the work day.

“I’ve worked midnights since I was 16,” said Shelley Campbell, a registered nurse who works in the Family Birthing Center. “I really enjoy the relationship you have with night staff. It’s more of a team effort together.”

Campbell has worked at CMCH for 14 years, working in geriatrics before coming to the birthing center, or OB, as it is known around the hospital, which is short for “obstetrics.”

The unit can have anywhere from 12 babies to none, which nurse Jane Heckart said can result in a “long night.”

“But it doesn’t happen very often,” she said.

The new birthing center opened in August 2008. The center has private rooms for families and rooms with private bathrooms and infant warmers in each room.

Campbell said even though the schedule is different than most people’s, the workload and job never changes, no matter what time of day it is.

“You’ve got everything here you’ve got in the middle of the day,” she said. “It’s just quite often a calmer, less frenzied kind of work.

“Same work, just different atmosphere.”

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