Nov 2, 2026 · 37 min · 10 segments
What happens when night shift is the first to take initiative on mobility in the ICU? What if saving lives through delirium and mobility became a "night shift affair"? In this episode, nocturnes…
Kali DaytonHost
As a nurse, I worked around half of my time on night shift throughout 11 different ICUs.
I remember in the Awaken Walking ICU, the NPs and founders of this process of care, Polly Bailey, Louise Bestian, would review how the night shift went and particularly what mobility was done as soon as they clocked in on the morning shift.
If I didn't get mobility done on my shift, they would come to the bedside at 6.50 a.m. and ask me how the shift went and what stopped mobility from happening.
To me, it felt like they were asking, if your patient is still alive, why didn't you get them sitting at the edge of the bed walking in the room or walking the hall? We would report what we did for mobility and hours of sleep to the next shift with the same importance as lines, tubes, drains, or ventilator settings.
Then day shift nurses would report hours of sleep in multidisciplinary rounds with the same importance as that day's creatinine level.
The night shift crew is always a vibe, but in the awake and walking ICU, those first few hours of the shift, we didn't have time to chat and hang.
We were a well-run machine working together to get everyone mobilized, bathed, and tucked in for the night with the goal of around 10 o'clock.
Many of our docs would hang out with us at the nurse's desk and chat, teach, support, and bond.
Woods would go room to room and check on each patient to make sure they were ready for bed, grabbing them warm blankets, turning the lights down, talking to them.
It was becoming a travel nurse that I became exposed to this culture or mentality of those are day shift problems.
As a new nurse in the Awaken Walking ICU, they had us go between day and night shift so that we could learn as much as possible from both shifts because they knew that night shift needed to consist of A-quality players.
becoming an NP and having much more continuity of care, and then training teams throughout the past 17 ICUs, my appreciation and reverence for night shift has only grown more and more.
This is why we train night shift from 9pm to 11.30pm because awakened walking ICUs is not just a day shift thing.
Yet I've had to face that this is yet another cultural barrier the revolution has to overcome.
When Dr. Dani Thomas, a revolutionist and now a dear friend, reached out to me as a nocturnist, I instinctively thought for a second, too bad he's on night shift.
Instead, Dr. Thomas leaned into the night shift vibe and has shown how night shifters who are empowered can become leaders in this revolution.
I'm excited to have Dr. Thomas share with you how a nocturnist and his night shift crew is showing us how it's done.
As a nurse, I worked around half of my time on night shift throughout 11 different ICUs.
I remember in the Awaken Walking ICU, the NPs and founders of this process of care, Polly Bailey, Louise Bestian, would review how the night shift went and particularly what mobility was done as soon as they clocked in on the morning shift.
If I didn't get mobility done on my shift, they would come to the bedside at 6.50 a.m. and ask me how the shift went and what stopped mobility from happening.
To me, it felt like they were asking, if your patient is still alive, why didn't you get them sitting at the edge of the bed walking in the room or walking the hall? We would report what we did for mobility and hours of sleep to the next shift with the same importance as lines, tubes, drains, or ventilator settings.
Then day shift nurses would report hours of sleep in multidisciplinary rounds with the same importance as that day's creatinine level.
The night shift crew is always a vibe, but in the awake and walking ICU, those first few hours of the shift, we didn't have time to chat and hang.
We were a well-run machine working together to get everyone mobilized, bathed, and tucked in for the night with the goal of around 10 o'clock.
Many of our docs would hang out with us at the nurse's desk and chat, teach, support, and bond.
Woods would go room to room and check on each patient to make sure they were ready for bed, grabbing them warm blankets, turning the lights down, talking to them.
It was becoming a travel nurse that I became exposed to this culture or mentality of those are day shift problems.
As a new nurse in the Awaken Walking ICU, they had us go between day and night shift so that we could learn as much as possible from both shifts because they knew that night shift needed to consist of A-quality players.
becoming an NP and having much more continuity of care, and then training teams throughout the past 17 ICUs, my appreciation and reverence for night shift has only grown more and more.
This is why we train night shift from 9pm to 11.30pm because awakened walking ICUs is not just a day shift thing.
Yet I've had to face that this is yet another cultural barrier the revolution has to overcome.
When Dr. Dani Thomas, a revolutionist and now a dear friend, reached out to me as a nocturnist, I instinctively thought for a second, too bad he's on night shift.
Instead, Dr. Thomas leaned into the night shift vibe and has shown how night shifters who are empowered can become leaders in this revolution.
I'm excited to have Dr. Thomas share with you how a nocturnist and his night shift crew is showing us how it's done.
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