float pay/ incentive pay?

[LanaBanana]

Long story, question at the end!

We have an issue on my floor and are planning a presentation to be presented to our Nursing Practice Council regarding the need for float pay. My floor has excellent staff - both in quantity and quality. We occassionally require staff from resource, but most days we have our own staff. Unfortunately, even when we are within our matrix, nursing services forces us to float to other floors. THe acuity on our floor is very high and it is causing problems for us when we have to go below our matrix staff. The other thing is that because we are a telemetry floor they feel we are the "best choice" to float because we can work med/surg or any of the cardiac/telemetry floors. Almost every weekend day we float a nurse and frequently during the week a nurse who is scheduled from 7a - 7p is required to float from 3-7. So you're essentially spending 3 1/2 hours of patient care on the float floor (not including report) and are required to do complete assessments on all your patients(usually 6 -8), do 1800 meds, blood sugars/insulin, and sometimes have an admit or 2. That's a lot to get done in a short amount of time. The last time I floated at 3:00 the nurse giving me report passed on 4 daily dressing changes to me that she didn't get done! Well, I passed those on to the night shift!

So here's my question....does your hospital pay float pay? Resource and agency nurses get paid more than $10 an hour more than the regular staff. We are trying to get float pay of $5-10 if we're required to float. I