On-call in the OR - page 2

Anytime I leave after midnight I tell them I'm turning my phone off at 6 AM (when call is over) and will call them when I wake up to see if I still need to come in. IMO if we don't stand up for ourselves who will..... The reason I do that is because the first time I worked until 2 am and was told we will get you out early I was not the first to leave and worked almost all day.

I agree! I have a rule of my own...if I am not in bed by 12:30am..I am not coming in the next day. first call works from noon until 9pm(or whenever cases are done) and on call(with trauma beeper) from home until 7am.. second call works 9am-5:30pm( or until cases done)... there seems to be no clear lines as to when second call gets called in...I know for sure that if we are in middle of a case and there is a trauma, second call gets called in..but I worked 17 hours straight on a holiday call once with only a 30 min break..brutal..I will not put myself or patients at risk because i worked past midnight and I am working at 7am next day..I call out. end of story. There should be no backlash from that...I know soem nurses and techs will go in next day anyway, but there are no medals or awards for that and I see it as dangerous. Some people might be able to function like that, I know I cannot. I know my limits.

Maybe some of you might be better off in some other form of nursing. Call is part of the game and when it seems most of you whine about too much of it this might not be for you. What part of call do you not understand? I'm sure this was explained to you when interviewing for the job. I'm sure it wasn't a sudden surprise. As you can see I am not too sympathetic to your cause. I like how some of you set your own rules if the call shift doesn't go your way. This is what OR nursing is all about. Go ahead now and rip me apart because I only check this place out about every 3 months or so.

Call is call...cover it as needed. Not working the next day is about safety for myself and patients. We don't need any more martyrs.....Doesn't have anything to do with working in the OR. We have a nice plaque in our break room honoring someone that feel asleep driving. Nope, not me, you can think I don't belong in the OR but I don't want my name on the wall.

Of course we all were told about call when we signed up for the job. However, there are times that a nurse does become unsafe after an extensive work shift and call shift, and should not be caring for patients the next day. Management (which I suspect you are) needs to understand that and advocate for safe patient care. There are many studies out there detailing the obstacles to patient safety when a nurse is exhausted from working too much.