I’m Ashleigh! I’m that night shift nurse and the mentor behind the Flip the Shift Method & Mentorship!
As a new grad nurse in 2014, I walked into my first ever night shift with a large iced coffee from McDonalds and braced myself for a long night of having heavy eyes.
I had the hopes and dreams to someday transition to day shift. I knew that it would be a few years. So when that fateful day came in 2017, I said… NO!
By the time it was my turn, I was LOVING night shift and THRIVING! I had realized over the years that there was a secret to thriving on night shift…
Hey there noctuRNal!
fitting the schedule into my life and working WITH it.
I knew one thing for sure when I was new: I did NOT want night shift to run or ruin my life.
Figuring out what I needed and how to make night shift work for me took me quite some time to figure it out. It definitely didn’t happen overnight.
The truth is, I didn’t really have it nailed down. I just did it. And it wasn’t necessarily easy. Every phase in life requires some adjustments in order to feel “normal”. Eventually, I realized I wasn’t the only person who struggled to make night shift “normal” for me. I heard many stories from other night shift nurses trying to survive the overnight lifestyle. So… I dove into what makes it possible to thrive on night shift.
What was I doing that was making it easier on me?
This is when the Flip the Shift Method & Mentorship was born! Since its development, I have been able to help hundreds of night shift nurses through emails, DMs, face-to-face conversations, 12-week mentorships, and 2-part strategy calls. I absolutely believe that nurses deserve to fit night shift into their life without sacrificing their health and sanity along the way.
I know what it’s like to feel discombobulated & hungover.
Taking it “one shift at a time” will not work long term. This is how we end up in survival mode, barely hanging on to our sanity, living in a persistent zombie mode. But if you’re ready to turn things around, take back your quality of life, AND still be a night shifter (however long you plan to be)…
I would absolutely LOVE nothing more than to help you put the LIFE back in your LIFEstyle.Are you ready to stop hitting snooze on life & start living again, too!?
Your mentor,
Ashleigh Small,
MSN, RN, CCRN, PN1-SSRC
The Fluff Stuff:
Ashleigh is a certified NICU nurse by night and a night shift nurse mentor by day. She began her bedside career in a level 4 NICU immediately upon graduating with her BSN from the University of Wisconsin- Oshkosh in 2014. As she advanced in her unit as a preceptor, mentor to new nurses, and charge nurse, she pursued her MSN. Ashleigh graduated with her MSN-Generalist from Southern New Hampshire University in 2021. It was then she realized her passion for nursing professional development and night shift. She applied her personal experience and evidence-based literature to develop an all-around approach to help other nurses navigate the unnatural schedule and prevent long-term effects of shift work. Thus, the Flip the Shift Method was born in 2020. Ashleigh later went on to achieve a certification in sleep, stress management, and recovery from Precision Nutrition in 2022.
When she’s not working bedside or mentoring, she enjoys spending quality time with her husband, two brittany spaniels, and family and friends. She also likes traveling to new places to try different hiking and outdoor adventures, reading anything with a mysterious twist, and binging Harry Potter movies or anything on Disney+.