Hospice on-call schedule

joanirobertson · Dec 6, 2013

I am a full time day shift RNCM and I do have to do on call hours. We do 1 weekend per month but then get off fri and Monday. We also have 1-2 night of 'back up on call' per month where we support the primary night time staff. You rarely get called out but if you do they allow us to flex our hours the following day

fireball78 · Dec 6, 2013

Thanks for your reply Joanirobertson!

RENnurse4/17 · Dec 6, 2013

We do one night a week and one weekend a month sometimes there is an extra weeknight or weekend day snuck in there. Unlike the last poster, there are no extra days off the week you are on call (on the weekend). We pretty much work twelve days straight with no days off. We are supposed to be allowed to flex time but it's usually just too busy. I'm not sure if any of this is "normal" or standard. I'm not a big fan of on call If you couldn't tell. It burns out full time case managers. I have at times been called out at 3am and just kept on working until 5pm. Hopefully this is not the typical experience.

TammyG · Dec 7, 2013

My hospice has dedicated on call nurses, and dedicated triage (phone) nurses. RNMs do not do any on-call.

jiij · Dec 8, 2013

My hospice has dedicated on-call nurses and the RN case managers do not do on-call (yet!). We case managers triage our own patients' calls (which is inefficient imho).

alyiana · Dec 26, 2013

I work for a small (growing) hospice of only 10 patients. I am the primary nurse for all patients, and we have a director who is a nurse but does not see patients. We take turns doing call (1 week on 1 week off). It's never really busy, and I can generally guess who is going to call and for what before they do, so I'm prepared to go. As we grow our plan to to have the CM split calls during the week and rotate weeks. (thus maybe 1 weeknight per week and 1 weekend per month).

We like the idea of CM doing on call because they know the pts better, even if it's not their main patient, they will know a little from IDT and team communication.

softrbreeze · Dec 26, 2013

I've worked for my current hospice almost 8 yrs- we have a nurse who JUST takes call Mon-Thurs and some holidays. We have another office in a nearby city that shares weekend call with us. Our office has 2 FT RNCMs and the other office has 1 FT RNCM. Also, both offices have PRNs that were hired primarily with the goal of them taking weekend call. We also have a FT LPN that assists both offices, if need be, but she does not take call. So I generally do not take call more than 1 weekend a month, if that. I am also expected to sign up for at least one holiday for primary call and one holiday for backup call. I am very happy with this arrangement, but it has not always been this way. In the past, I have taken call much more frequently.

tbroz1229 · Jan 12, 2014

Hello! I an a full-time dayshift RNCM, I work 0800-1630. We are take call every fifth weekend, for a 8.5 hour period each day, there are 4 nurses on call each weekend day and the time slots are as follows: 0700-1530, 0800-1630, and 2 RN's 1030-1900. We have a day off during the week the week prior to and after our on-call weekend. We also take call every 24th weekday from 0700-0800. We take call one holiday a year with the same staffing as the weekend schedule. Our agency staffs after-hour and overnight nurses who visit patients when needs arise after 4:30pm.