ECMO Nurses - What does your schedule look like?

[FlangieRN]

Hi guys!

My hospital is talking about doing ECMO and it peaks some of the staff's interest. I am just curious for those of you that do it, what is your schedule like? How do you do call days? Do you get paid differentials just when running ECMO or do you have a higher base rate for being an ECMO specialist nurse? What do you like and don't like about the schedule? Thanks in advance!

[Corey Narry, MSN, RN, NP]

In our hospital, this is called the Mechanical Circulatory Support service and it is a team of physicians, NP/PA's, and RN's. With the exception of the physicians, all employees are under a union so pay is based on title so as an RN in this service, your pay is determined by your career ladder placement rather than your role.

The RN's may make the same as the rest of the other nurses depending on their years of experience and rank on the career ladder (CNI vs II vs III). They do have a call schedule and per the union contract, RN's who take call are paid half of their hourly rate for each hour during the duration of the call and time and a half if they are asked to come on-site.

This is different than the bedside ICU RN's who monitor ECMO in these patients and are staffed at 2 nurses to 1 patient. Not all nurses in the ECMO units are trained...it takes a few months of being comfortable in the CTSICU before they train the bedside RN's to do that.