Twelve hour days can be very long. Most of the time the time goes by quickly. These days, with workloads as they are, the days go very quickly. In a typical 12 hour shift you can put some miles on. I have always thought a good fund raising idea would be to put pedometers on nurses for a select period of time and then pay per mile. Maybe Bill Gates or some mystery Arabian oil man could afford it...a little exaggeration but illustrative of my point. We are on our feet and moving for 12 hours, mostly on concrete floors. We put a lot of stress on our feet and lower legs. Some wear support hose. But the best answer is a pair of comfortable shoes.

  When I first graduated from nursing school, it was still expected that you wore "nursing shoes". Usually they were clunky and cutesy, They were however, leather and therefore durable, and well padded. You had to buy the little white polish bottle and pretty much keep it within arms reach because scuffs just somehow magically appeared all the time. One trip from the hospital door to the car and it looked like you had been in a stampede.  Then, the appearance of more trendy and expensive tennis shoes happened, and more and more facilities, in their dress code revisions, began to allow them. They were comfortable and were pretty snazzy as well. Still governed by OSHA regulations (www.osha.gov), strapless were still a no-go and that is a good thing.

  Then, the Birkenstock revolution began. What a great thing for tired and aching feet. The individual molding as you wore them, the comfort of slipping your feet into something so wonderful made me happy to be tromping around in them all day. But they are not the most attractive things, that's for sure. And I found myself looking for that old white shoe polish bottle a lot. I wore the cork down all sideways and had to finally pitch them.

  Now because they are about 120 bucks or so, I have yet to spring for another pair. My Reeboks and Nike tennis shoes are nice, but I yearn for the days of stupid looking, round toed shoes that make my feet happy. Maybe this year for Christmas Santa will remember.