Excessive absenteeism

[RRRNNN]

I'm one of three members of nurse management at a LTC. We take turns being on call and have been covering sick calls when nobody can be found to come in. The staff nurses work 12-hour shifts and we are fully-staffed.

The amount of absenteeism is absolutely ridiculous. I'm on call this weekend. This morning I went to work at 6:00 am and at 1:00 pm the night shift nurse called in sick. Because of two IVs that have to be administered tomorrow morning, I was already scheduled to be at work from 6am - 9am tomorrow. I was not about to come home and get 3-4 hours of sleep and then go back in and work 6p - 9a.

One of the nurses working day shift today is one of our frequent absentees. She has called in 9 times in the past 4 months. Management had to cover one of her shifts over the past weekend and this Tuesday. I mandated her to work a 16-hour shift today, and she proceeded to call the DON who worked a 12-hour shift to cover for a different absentee last night. She woke him up when he'd only had 3 hours of sleep in 48 hours due to covering for sick calls. She said she was refusing to work until 10:00 and he told her that if nobody could come in and cover for her, we weren't giving her a choice. We've already hired another nurse to replace her and will let her go soon.

All of the management in this LTC is new and we've been a bit too lenient. We're cracking down and this is our first time mandating anybody to stay.

Has anybody here had any success dealing with absenteeism? The facility did not have an absentee policy in place and we're putting out a new employee handbook soon and including a new absentee policy which assigns points. 15 points in 6 months is automatic termination. One unexcused absence is 5 points, plus there will be points for being late, and a nurse can erase points by picking up a shift when someone calls in sick. Keeping our fingers crossed.

[DawnadonRN]

Our director buys the prize out of his own wallet. It's honestly a great facility. Just too many people that don't want to work.

[mander]

I may have just left work in a rage because of low staffing and call ins... We can barely meet minimum lately. I got the scheduler to swap someone from Friday morning to tomorrow evening... but she can only give 6 hours, which still leaves us short. I asked why she can't work the full shift and I guess she had some lame excuse about her kids that I knew was a lie. I rolled my eyes, and my coworker just tells me "Now, you'll have a kid soon too!" AND? And I'll be here at 11 pm because people don't come into work. I'll miss out on his football games or karate matches because people can't NOT call off on a weekend. And who's gonna give a ****? Oh right, no one! We are both ADONs but she's not on call d/t a prior deal. I work significantly more hours than she does. I never care about that until she says things like THAT. UUUGH.

But yes, everyone calls off and has no sense of responsibility. It's maddening. You can call off 8 days within a calendar year, and it resets on your hire date. If you go three months without calling off, you get extra $ in that next paycheck. But I don't think anyone's done it. Actually, my DON, the other ADON, and I are the only ones who haven't called off in....ever. We get ******* at because we don't grant vacations but we have to account for a higher amount of people calling off... so we can't tell you it's okay to have Tuesday off because we expect 3 people not to show up vs just 1... And people complain about not getting off but how would they feel if they were short because someone wanted vacation? Oh right, they'd whine about that too. We're stuck between a rock and a hard place and have to think about the residents first.

Everyone wants extra extra extra for working extra... well you already get time and a half. I suggested maybe a drawing every weekend for $25 or $50 or a Tim Horton's card, but that isn't enough. Our admin doesn't want to give a bonus the closer it gets to the weekend to prevent people from playing the system and not picking up until Friday afternoon... which I agree with. But we live in almost the middle of nowhere. No one's applying. We give the new grad LPNs $100 a month straight into student loans... no takers so far. Let me know if anyone solves this.