Night work/shift work help from those who've done it?

[pixiegumboot]

We may be working nights soon, probably 12 midnight to 8am. Self employed so will either share or one of us will do it all. no travel time.

my question is, is it better to do one night on, one night off, 5dpw, weekends off.

Or, one week on, one week off, again 5dpw weekends off.

Or split week, 3 on?

[DeafLeopard]

I would go for wo/wo as if you do alternate days it is very difficult to get your body into a good sleeping routine.

[pixiegumboot]

I see, now that I've thought about it a bit more I guess it means that the second day you will probably be awake for 24hrs???

[twinklytoes]

week on, week off is preferred for my team because of the body clock, also another positive is that they can tag 5 days leave on the end of the week off and actually have a 10day holiday somewhere with using less annual leave.

[pixiegumboot]

Thank-you. anyone else done a split week?

[DoingTheSwanThing]

I've done both split weeks and 7 nights as part of an on call rota so perhaps not the same as permanent nights. I much prefer the split nights (3 & 4), accepting that it means being on nights twice as frequently. I find it much easier to recover from split weeks (and a heck of a lot better for family life).
That said it would depend on the length of the shift, 7 12/13 hour nights are grim!