Tired Nurse Tries “Scanning” Her Way Back Home at Front Door

Being a nurse can be a very demanding job. Oftentimes, you’re run ragged running between patients, especially if you get a particularly demanding one or a patient who is a fellow nurse who thinks that they can do their job better than you can.

This is probably why this viral clip from nurse Lizzie Nicole (@thelizzienicole3) is currently trending on TikTok with nearly 800,00 likes. It appears to have been captured on her doorbell camera and records the exact moment she returned from a night shift.

In the clip, Lizzie can be seen walking towards the front door of her home, her eyes barely open. She stands in front of it and raises her ID badge several times as if the card will somehow unlock it.

She writes in a text overlay of the video: “tell me you’re tired from night shift without telling me you’re tired from night shift” while adding a series of hashtags in the caption delineating that she works as a nurse in a children’s hospital.

One TikToker expressed how work habits tend to die hard and that it’s often difficult to separate ones work behaviors from their home life: “Didn’t work night shift but I’ve answered my cell phone at home ‘NICU this is Erica'”

Another penned that they lived with a night shift nurse and understand the twilight hour fatigue all too well: “my ex used to be a night shift nurse. I would go to work in the morning and see that she left her keys in the door”

As it turns out, however, this type of phenomenon exists for other people in different work settings as well: “I work in a prison setting and I tried to use keys to open the refrigerator in the break room. Lmao”

And then there’s a behavior that all of us have probably engaged in at one point: thinking that our car keys can do it all: “not me trying to open the door with my car keys,” someone else penned.

The late shift sleepies for some folks hit them alarmingly hard, like this one TikTok user who said that they often had no idea how they made it home because they were so fatigued: “Worked nights for years. There were times I couldn’t remember getting home some days.”

According to WebMD, the effect sleep deprivation has on one’s ability to function appropriately and remember how to perform certain tasks is significant. The outlet writes: “Without adequate sleep, your brain becomes foggy, your judgment poor, and your fine motor skills hindered.”

WebMD also states that various types of memory inputs are also affected by sleep or the lack thereof: “Both acquisition and recall are functions that take place when you are awake. However, researchers believe sleep is required for consolidation of a memory, no matter the memory type. Without adequate sleep, your brain has a harder time absorbing and recalling new information.”