Call Schedule

[Kabin]

Probably varies from job to job but what does call typically look like?

I interviewed for a NI position and call was 4:1. There was no compensation, you could receive phone calls at any hour of the night and you're expected to be back at work the next morning.

Is this the exception or is call the dirty little secret in nursing informatics?

[ikarus01]

As you acknowledged, the on call schedule varies from place to place and also many times the on call schedule is dictated by the number of analysts in a team.

I've been in all types of scenarios and probably the ones I liked were where I was on call only for my own application. Obviously this happens in larger health care systems that have different teams for different departments/applications.

In most hospitals though, you were expected to answer calls for all applications and those were the most stressful nights of the job.

Also, some places will give you like 1-3 dollars/hour extra in addition to your salary. Not much, but better than nothing.

Some will give you an extra day off or if you were on a call at 2am, and the ticket took you 2 hours to solve, some managers would say, to take half a day off, or some would give you the choice to accumulate the time and then take a whole day off. Really depended on management, team environment, or if at the time there were no major projects going on (yes, I know, always something major going on! )

I was lucky enough I guess that I was never at a place where I wasn't compensated in any way, and the only time I ever recall being expected to show up the same morning even though you might have been on the phone from 3am to 5am, was at small hospital where only 2 of us were there as analysts; but even then, I was told to come in whenever I woke up.

Being on call was definitely one of my least favorite parts of the job and that's why when I interviewed for jobs that had on call rotations, I would always ask what the rules were because as you mentioned from your interview, some places will tell you that you're expected to be back at 8am, and there is no extra compensation, etc.

Fortunately for me, I was always in a position where I could turn down those jobs; but 99% of the places, always had at least comp time off. And as much as I hated being on call, most of my employers were fair with those on call, so really never felt this was a little dirty secret in informatics.

[mydesygn]

In our dept, we rotate call daily for the clinical team and then we rotate night/weekend call each week. You are on call for all the clinical apps not just the apps that you are a specialist for. Initally, they tried the specialist route but some staff would end up never getting a calls and other staff were constantly resolving issues. In general, if we are up at night late with a call, we can take off a half day but generally it's really not worth it. I may sleep a bit later the next day. Having been a nurse, I understand a hospital is a 24 hour organization. We have had quite a few analysts from outside healthcare who left because of night/weekend call. No sympathy from me - it was well explained at hire that hospitals are not 9 to 5 and you may get called even when you are not on call

[ccweisbard]

Well... I guess you could say I am on call 24/7 without compensation where I work, however I rarely get called and have never felt it to be an issue. I work for a surgical center with an 18 bed inpatient unit....

[Kabin]

This one's a large non-profit healthcare system mostly in the southwest. They're running a squeaky tight budget. You're expected to use you're own cellphone and you better have unlimited voice mins otherwise it'll quickly get expensive. The good news is you can work from your home but you'll use your own computer, internet, and they'll monitor the happening's on your computer.

All in all, it wouldn't be bad if the systems were stable and not in a state of flux but that isn't the case. They have an aggressive schedule of change and there'll be much teeth gnashing for users and the small NI team.

A 4:1 call schedule would be ideal for a young person right out of school but I never did well with night shift. It was just too challenging to maintain a family life. Losing sleep every 4th night wouldn't be much better. And as I recall, irregular sleep patterns are well known to lessen your health - elevated cholesterol, weight gain, heart disease, high blood pressure, ....