DAILY ROUTINE – HOME AND WORK

Daily Routine

There are many collocations and idioms in talking about our daily routine.

EXAMPLES

Personal routine

• get out of bed OR   get up
• take a shower
• get OR eat breakfast
• take the bus OR train (to work)
• work a shift (work and early shift / work a late shift)
• be on the graveyard shift OR work the graveyard shift
• have a day off

Work routine (Bedside Nursing)

• change into (scrubs OR work clothes OR a uniform)
• do rounds OR do handover
• set out medication OR IVs
• do OR check OR record vitals
• prep a patient (for a procedure) = prepare a patient (for a procedure)

See below for more

SIMPLE PRESENT TENSE for routines

We usually use simple present tense to talk about things we do every day. We also use it for things that happen often, usually, sometimes, occasionally, seldom, rarely and never.

We conjugate the verb at the start of the expression (e.g. get, take, have, do) and the rest of the expression does not change.

Positive sentences:

• I get up at 6:30 and get dressed by 7:15.
• He usually gets out of bed at 6:30 and gets dressed by 7:15.
• We rarely take the bus to work – only if the weather is horrible. The hospital is close by, so we usually walk.

Negative sentences:

We use the helping verb “do”, which we conjugate and place in front of the main verb in the collocation or idiom. The main verb remains in the root form.

• I don’t work the graveyard shift often.
• She doesn’t wear her scrubs on the street. She always changes into her regular clothes before she leaves work.

VERY IMPORTANT SPEAKING PATTERNS

Practice repeating aloud each collocation above, running the underlined words together until they FLOW AS ONE EXPRESSION.