Being Mandated to Work

klone, MSN, RN · Sep 20, 2023

Are you unionized?
If your concern is about your dogs, I would probably look into hiring a pet sitter/walker through Rover, who would be able to come on short notice and add your pets to their rotation. If you live in a large enough community, I'm sure you would be able to find someone who could do that for you with a few hours' notice.

And in answer to your question - everywhere I've worked where people could be mandated to stay, it has only been in 4-hour increments, and everyone took a turn.

JKL33 · Sep 21, 2023

I would expect that they consistently follow their own policies around this.

You had to work 16 hours, which is what the others who work 12-hr shifts would've had to work if one of them had been mandated. This move did save your management from having to find someone to cover the back half of the day shift. But--that's their responsibility. I wouldn't let them mandate me more frequently than everyone else due solely to the length of the shift I'm already working. (Or, actually what I used to love to do is barter/get something I want in return, as in "sure, I'll stay over even though it isn't my turn if I'm able to give up my shift on Friday..." ??)

brandy1017, ASN, RN · Sep 26, 2023

Mandation is a common practice at many hospitals and has become more frequent as short staffing worsened with covid. It may not be as simple as getting a Dr note. Many places require you to ask for a disability accommodation, where your Dr will have to say you have a medical illness that qualifies for disability accommodation. And then HR and your manager have access to your medical info and your manager has the last call whether or not to "accommodate" you. Sadly, this had become a common corporate practice in general,not just nursing, and as you might imagine, many times it goes against the worker and the decision is made to let the worker go. That if you can't do the job as they require they aren't legally required to accommodate you, only try and see if it is feasible. If you have a union you might have more chance of this being an option, but even than it is not a guarantee. You can talk to employee health to find out more about your options and if it will be feasible.

Where I worked, after the corporate takeover by Ascension, that was the practice; and employee health told me in the past they would make the decision, but no longer had that power and that the manager would have the final say and be able to basically terminate a worker if they couldn't work 16 hours. So it would depend on your personal relationship with the manager and the extent of short staffing in the department and the hospital since they aren't legally required to accommodate you.

While you can call in sick after being mandated, it will count against you as a sick occurrence and with the strict attendance policies that could harm you. The only way out of that is to get intermittent FMLA that would be your best option to at least give you some down time after a 16 hour stretch. But I agree it is ridiculous to expect nurses to work 16 plus hours at the drop of a hat when we have patients lives in our hands; yet pilots, and truck drivers and bus drivers all have strict work time limits! Why don't we!

klone, MSN, RN · Sep 27, 2023

The OP didn't say anything about getting a doctor's note or seeking an accommodation, did they?

brandy1017, ASN, RN · Sep 27, 2023

klone said:

The OP didn't say anything about getting a doctor's note or seeking an accommodation, did they?

I had read this last week and thought she mentioned a Dr's note, but see I was wrong. In the past, it was as simple as a Dr's note to stop mandation but that is probably no longer the case in most places.

Also, as to the OP being the only 8 hour employee and getting mandated, that was a common occurrence where I worked as well. As we still had some 8 hour PM nurses and a couple part time 8 hour night nurses, but would always end up short on nights, especially on the weekend, and so an 8 hour nurse would usually be mandated since they could then stay and work the rest of the night. As you could imagine, most PM nurses got tired of being mandated every week and quickly left. Finally, the new manager decided to make everyone work 12 hour shifts due to the staff shortage. It didn't really change the staff shortage, just distributed mandation more equally, but also lead to more nurses quitting, as well, who didn't want to work 12 hours.

klone, MSN, RN · Sep 28, 2023

Can't win for losing, eh?

At my first manager job, the nurses were all on 8s. A good portion of them (mostly the younger, newer ones) really wanted to go to 12s, but I couldn't just change to 12s because I knew it would cause the huge outflux of nurses quitting that you described above. So we did a trial of doing some 8s and some 12s and holy hell was that a nightmare to coordinate. That lasted about a month. So then I just very slowly did it through attrition, and every new job posting, I posted it as a 12-hour position.

JBMmom, MSN, NP · Sep 28, 2023

We have also had similar problems with the 8/12 split. Our ICU has eliminated 8 positions almost entirely, there's one nurse left on night shift that still has 8s. For a while the 3-11pm nurses were constantly being mandated for 16 hour shifts, leading both of them to quit or switch shifts.

In your case there's no way you should be mandated out of turn because of their inability to staff. I also work 11p-7am when I pick up (per diems can do 8 instead of 12) and I've stayed a couple times until 3pm but that's a rough double. I hope that your manager gets back to you and confirms it will not be the accepted practice. If you're in a union you could definitely bring this up as something they need to look into. If not, you can take the chance and refuse and see what happens. Good luck!