Do you take call?

Call should always be voluntary. Mandatory call is NOT an option.

My first job we had 16 hours a month of mandatory call to sign up for. You had to sign up in blocks of 4 hours and it had to not interfere with your work schedule. (Nevermind your home schedule.) You could put your four hour blocks in any configuration you liked providing there was room. They had a complicated system to try and make it fair for what order people signed up in every month, because the first people to sign up get what they want, the last to sign up get yucky call.

They paid a couple bucks an hour if they didn't call you in and time and a half if you did get called in, regardless of how many hours you worked that week.

My current job is in a very small unit. We don't have call, but we do have self scheduling. The supervisor has our phone numbers and if our unit has a problem we'll get a call to see if we're able to help. Usually that works, if it doesn't then they do have nurses for other units on call who they can pull if they need to, and one or two PRN nurses who like coming in to help us out. If the other units have holes in their schedule, they publish it and we can sign up to work, providing it doesn't interfere with the primary dept. schedule. I can't do that yet because I'm new and haven't oriented anywhere else yet, but I will eventually.

I think the call system I first described was a decent attempt at "self containment" as it kept that unit from having to depend on float nurses; you may have a grouchy nurse to come help but at least they know the unit because they work in it. My current job is a much smaller facility, small unit, and the whole facility has to look out for all of its units to keep itself going.

This has been the standard most places I have worked:

1 - Call is voluntary

2 - Call is paid (usually $2-4/hr for hours on call)

3 - Pay is time and a half when called in, even if not in overtime

We never had any problem finding people who wanted to take call. However, units that do not pay for hours on-call, or that do not offer time and a half when called in would probably have more difficulty finding volunteers.