Getting more hours as an OR RN?

See if others are willing to give up call. Offer to swap with nurses working off shifts for shift differential. Join a specialty team that takes a lot of call. (Seriously- when I joined the heart team where there's only a few people covering a heck of a lot of call, my paychecks jumped a lot). Pick up a weekend per diem job. Not so sure about the 12 hour shift- those folks generally only work 36 hours/week vs the 8 hour folks who work a full 40 hours/week- seems counterproductive unless the shift differential can more than make up the difference of losing 4 hours.

Unfortunately, that's about it. Many facilities that would otherwise offer overtime don't offer it to OR nurses. My facility has a program where vacant positions can be filled by those wanting overtime- it's available to the whole hospital on the computer. However, OR staff are blocked from using it. My guess would be it's because the OR is a closed unit- nobody floats in, so nobody can float out either.

heh guess you work at a much bigger hospital than I do. Theres no teams call wise (ie heart team). Just one call team, and they cover whatever comes in.

8/hr shifts only get 37.5 hours a week (unpaid lunch) vs 36 for 12s so its not that big of a difference.

How difficult would it be to get a perdiem job as an OR nurse ? id love to pick up a perdiem sat/sun 12h shift job. I just figured with the way ORs are run that would be kinda dangerous and scary to have someone who doesn't really know your facility working sparingly.

Hey we'll take you in Houston! We're always looking for more nurses! Seems like everyone is prego in CVOR, so with 3 on maternity leave we're all alwaysssss getting OT. We run a 24 hour service.

I work 4 10s at my primary job and have a second contingent job working 1 8-hour shift. If my primary job is slow i can easily pick up more hours at the second job, or get the day day off to myself. Plus the contingent job pays more so it is like working OT.

Not sure if you're interested in non-OR nursing at all, but you could look into Private Duty Nursing. It's very easy to pick up part-time work in PDN, particularly on weekends.

The downside is that it sometimes doesn't pay as much as floor/OR nursing (although the job I'm on right now pays more than I'd make in the local facilities). The upside is that it's generally not as physically taxing, and you're only working a 1:1 ratio. Depending on acuity / time of day, you can also get a lot of downtime (like how I'm surfing AN while on the job, and I'll soon be doing schoolwork while getting paid, too).