Oily Nurses

I used to work on oil rigs in the North Sea – and the Australian outback. Hard work, well paid but the intriguing thing was the work pattern – 2 weeks on, 2 off in the Uk. (Oz was harder, two on, one off…) It was bearable as I would rationalize it to myself as two weeks holiday a month !
Now I have spoken to three nurses recently, all in their early twenties, who have given up nursing because of the stress and pain of the job. I suggested a change in hours – say 7 days on, 7 off – or 5 and 5 etc and all three said if that were the case they would still be nursing. OK it’s a bit anecdotal but can anyone else see value in this ?
hW – are there any other jobs out there that do something similar?

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Comment by Sinclair McLay on August 22, 2011 at 11:07: Yes I do remember that post – that’s pretty much how I lived my life whilst working on the rigs! Thinking about it again, the oil companies probably conceived this way of working for cost reasons – cuts down on choppering workers out to the installation. The point I was making about nurses – or other high stress jobs – would be that it would be done for compassionate reasons…perhaps we should revisit Kim’s piece – is it still up? Or maybe Kim you could post a revision. Seems like we are all working too hard today – now that’s ok if you actually enjoy your job…What ever happened to the dream of increased leisure time….I think the figures show that it seems to being reversed….I blame the banks!

Comment by Phil Bachmann on August 22, 2011 at 9:21: Re: Can anyone else see the value in this.

Sure, actually Kim Jones wrote a piece published here a long time ago in which people lived in blocks like this: two weeks (I forget the actual time span) of hard work, two weeks of hedonism. etc.

Never having done this myself, I'm imagining you develop two quite separate images of yourself.