Holidays in Home Health

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I'm a nursing student, working for a home health agency during school. Curious to know how your agencies handle holidays and time off requests. Ours had no stated policy, until everyone asked for the holiday off. (Really? You didn't think this would happen?) So the new policy is that no one gets any holidays off. Everyone must work either Thanksgiving or the day after, AND Christmas Eve or Day, AND New Year's Eve or Day. As you can imagine, this created great disgruntlement among staff. My regular hours have me working acceptable and manageable shifts on those days, so I am trying to lay low on this one. My phone blew up on Thanksgiving with requests begging and pleading me to come in, when others didn't. I had just worked the overnight, so I declined on that ground. I am sure Christmas will be worse. FWIW, we're under-staffed anyway.

What do your agencies do, and how does it work?

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I do extended care home health. My agencies have always had the policy that if your day to work fell on a holiday, then you were expected to work unless you informed them well in advance. They would not have to worry about having no shows, as people usually fought to work on a holiday to be paid holiday pay. Now, I have been surprisingly called off so that a special snowflake could get the holiday pay. That was a work situation where I ended up wondering whether or not I needed to move on down the road.

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Specializes in Vents, Telemetry, Home Care, Home infusion.

Our staff required to work 2 major holidays and 2 minor along with monthly weekend rotation. Holiday + vacation time off needs to be submitted in May. No vacations permitted between 12/15 to 1/5 so that Holidays an end of year PTO accomidated.

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I think its a bit different with a well staffed agency. we have sign up's for on call monthly, and we staff 24/7 on call. usual business days, we all work unless PDO was approved, and nobody is required to work holidays. we do have a quota and required so many days per month on call. I personally prefer working holidays, and we do WORK... we have many daily wound care, iv infusions etc. plus you are on call for the 24 hours. We do get mandatory PDO for the holiday and if you work, you get an addition bonus for on call plus your time and a half for the hours you are actually working. its a good bonus on the paycheck. but the people I work with are good too.. we switch off if needed and should nobody sign up, then the branch manager will insist and just stick someone in, but its never happened as of yet.

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Specializes in NICU, adult med-tele.

Apparently any scheduled patients and SOCs that must be done on major holidays go to the PRN nurses at our agency. Found that out a few weeks after accepting a PRN position. :dead:

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PRN here. I have to work 1 major Winter holiday. I'm working New Year's Day.

Summer, I don't care about.

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Specializes in M/S, MICU, Hospice, Homecare.

I am PRN and we work when we want to work. I make my own schedule with my patients. If a SOC comes in and needs to be opened on a holiday, our scheduler will find a nurse to do the SOC that is willing to work on the holiday. Since we are contingent, we do not get holiday pay, CTO or any bonuses. However, we do get paid very well, do not have a quota or set patient load, and have a lot more freedoms. I don't think I would love homecare like I do, if I had to see a set amount of patients a day/week.

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