Float vice versa Floor/ER

Some hospitals have a regularly scheduled float pool. The nurses are scheduled specific hours a week. You may be the first cancelled, how often that happens can really vary.

Some hospitals cross train floats to ER.

If you are a float you don't have "your floor".

The scheduler may text you before you come in and tell you where you'll be working. Or there may simply be a list posted by the time clock.

It all can really vary per each hospital.

At our hospital as a float, I stay within the program (ie Medicine). The ED is a separate entity.

This is a large city centre hospital - so the medicine program has 13 distinct units we must be comfortable floating to including everything from a step down ICU where the ratio is 2:1 to non acute units where the ratio is 15:1.

We have both 'casual' floats and positioned floats - as casual you pick up the hours you want but risk being cancelled. With a position you cannot be cancelled. I have found that the casual pool is used similarly to an on call list which drove me crazy and forced me into a position pretty quick as the schedule was killing me (getting cancelled like 3 of 5 shifts a week but then getting called in on days I had scheduled as 'off')

Some people who have a unit (like an FTE on a unit) will float out to other units for extra time or OT... but strictly speaking as a float you belong to no unit.

I work float pool and am scheduled specific hours a week. I am usually be the first ( offered to be )cancelled cause I get paid a little more for being float pool. The upside is I get a differential for it, the downside is I may be cancelled. Now how often you get cancelled varies. I was cross trained at my facility to go anywhere they need me, including ER and other specialty areas but each facility may have their own policies on that.

Another downside for some people might be not knowing where you will be working from one day to the next. I also can have my shift broken up into 4 hrs on different floors instead of a whole shift on one floor.