Health center hours

[plmrn]

Hi all.

I am the head nurse at an overnight camp in NY.We have about 300 campers and 175 staff. Nursing staff consists of 4 FT Rns and one clinic coordinator-a secretarial type position. Currently, we are open from about 8 am til 9 pm, and on call after that. As RNs, we currently have 2 days off per week, and take call 2 nights a week. I have made the schedule such that we work 8-14 hours a day, depending on the circumstances. I have 2 RNs on at all times.

I am very curious to find out how you run your health center. They are talking about decreasing our days off to only one next year. I want to find out what other camps do. I am already close to burned out, I'm not sure I can handle 6 days a week.

Peggy

[knzygrl2]

I work in PA and have about the same size camp. Our healthcenter hours are 8 to 10. We always have two nurses on. We either work from 8 to 3 or 3 to 10 and we only get one day off a week. We have 5 total RN's so we take about one night of call a week. It seems to work really well for us!

Monica,RN

[Neveranurseagain, RN]

I work at about the same size camp. We have 2 RN's, and can take the afternoon or evening off occasionally but it only leaves one nurse in the infirmary. We are on call at night too, but only get disturbed one or two nights a week. We are "open" for routine things from 7:30am to 10:00pm, but one of us has to get up at 6:15am to give water sport kids their am meds, then the other RN stays up late to give the HS meds.

At another same size camp I work at, we only have 2 RN's, but are responsible for waking kids (extreme sports camp)up with head injuries q 2 hrs at night. But most of the nurses only work one week then go home (exhausted!) and we take turns waking kids up. Not to mention the occasionaly N&V kids.... Infirmary hours are from 7:45 am to 10:30pm. but we both sleep in the infirmary.

[plmrn]

Thanks for the info. Hearing that, I've got it good!

[TheSquire, DNP, APRN, NP]

A few years ago, I worked as a Health Officer at a scout reservation that sees up to 1,000 campers with around 90 or so staff. The health lodge is open 24/7, and is preferably staffed by at least two health officers with at least a Med First Responder license (which is what I had) or preferably at least an EMT-B, though occasionally I was the only Health Officer on reservation. I was also the only full-time Health Officer and as a result got very little time off to myself.

Med administration is decentralized, with unit leaders keeping the medications for all scouts in the unit in a locked container and keeping track of medications on a provided MAR. Health Officers use SMOs to offer out-of-hospital care, with more severe issues referred either to the camp physician's office in town or to the local ED.

Besides dealing with medical and trauma emergencies, Health Officers are expected to coordinate all other emergency responses on the reservation.

In short, you all have it very nice.