How does your emergency room cover call-offs?

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I work in an emergency room that covers call-offs with mandatory overtime, and in addition, when the schedule has open shifts--extra shifts are assigned when not volunteered for. This has resulted in HIGH TURNOVER, LOW MORALE and BURNOUT. In addition, we are reviewing shift differentials for evening, night and weekends. I live in Southeastern Ohio. In addition, we are wondering for the nurses who work 7a-7p if they get evening shift differential starting a 3pm?

So I am hoping that you will tell me 3 things :balloons: :

1. How does your emergency room handle call-off?

2. How are "open" shifts filled?

3. What are the shift differentials, and when do they take affect?

Your response is much appreciated! Joyce

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Specializes in ER.
I work in an emergency room that covers call-offs with mandatory overtime, and in addition, when the schedule has open shifts--extra shifts are assigned when not volunteered for. This has resulted in HIGH TURNOVER, LOW MORALE and BURNOUT. In addition, we are reviewing shift differentials for evening, night and weekends. I live in Southeastern Ohio. In addition, we are wondering for the nurses who work 7a-7p if they get evening shift differential starting a 3pm?

So I am hoping that you will tell me 3 things :balloons: :

1. How does your emergency room handle call-off?

2. How are "open" shifts filled?

3. What are the shift differentials, and when do they take affect?

Your response is much appreciated! Joyce

I work in Western MA, just to give you a bit of the geography!

Open shifts and sick calls are covered by the begging, borrowing, and pleading of the scheduler or the staffing office. They will often have someone stay late (volunteer) and come in early to each work half a shift and cover the open shift.

Day is 7:00 to 3:30 - with no diff other than weekends (which starts Friday night with the night shift and ends with the end of the evening shift on Sunday).

Evenings is $1.25/hr - starts with your scheduled start and ends at your scheduled end. Eves is paid $300/quarter "bonus" for the off-shift commitment.

Nights is $2./hr - again, customized per your schedule. The "bonus" is $500 quarter.

We have only one 12 hr shift - 11-11 - and they get the eve diff all hours.

Hope that this helps!

Chip

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Thanks Chip!

QUOTE=chip193]I work in Western MA, just to give you a bit of the geography!

Open shifts and sick calls are covered by the begging, borrowing, and pleading of the scheduler or the staffing office. They will often have someone stay late (volunteer) and come in early to each work half a shift and cover the open shift.

Day is 7:00 to 3:30 - with no diff other than weekends (which starts Friday night with the night shift and ends with the end of the evening shift on Sunday).

Evenings is $1.25/hr - starts with your scheduled start and ends at your scheduled end. Eves is paid $300/quarter "bonus" for the off-shift commitment.

Nights is $2./hr - again, customized per your schedule. The "bonus" is $500 quarter.

We have only one 12 hr shift - 11-11 - and they get the eve diff all hours.

Hope that this helps!

Chip

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When some one calls off, either you beg someone to come in for OT, someone stays voluntarily, or the charge nurse has to stay. No one is ever mandated and thankfully, since we all get along so well, it usually gets covered so no one is stuck.

Our open shifts are usually filled with per diems or someone will take it for OT.

As far as shift diff, it's $1.25/hr and you have to work more then 4hrs of the off shift to get it. Therefore 7a-7p does not get the diff where I work.

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1. How does your emergency room handle call-off?

2. How are "open" shifts filled?

3. What are the shift differentials, and when do they take effect

1. Nurses are called at 8 am to see if they can come in. Next, agencies are called.

2. Open shifts are first offered to staff. There are monetary incentives for extra shifts--$100 for a 12 hour day shift, $125 for 12 hour nights, $75 for an 8 hour day/evening, $90 for 8 hour nights, and $40 for 4 hours. t. Agency staffs the remainder. Also staff can cancel any ageny RN's shift at any time if we want to take their shift.

3. Differentials are 2.59 for evenings, $3.21 for nights, and $1.35 for weekends. Evening starts at 3 pm. Full-time night staff get a $5 differential.

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So I am hoping that you will tell me 3 things :

1. How does your emergency room handle call-off?

2. How are "open" shifts filled?

3. What are the shift differentials, and when do they take affect?

Your response is much appreciated! Joyce

====================

Replace with part time and casual nurses who are not at a premium rate of pay. If no takers, we then go to full timers and are offered O/T.

Open shifts are issued to those nurses not a complement first then it goes to part time, casuals and then full time for O/T if not filled.

Charge nurse $0.70 per hour

Evening $1.10

Nights $1.35

Weekend $1.45

Hope this helps.

Sarah

Canadian

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Call offs are covered by folk who are asked to come in for OT. Until that zone is covered, the person in the next zone and the charge take care of any pts that may be in there.

We have a "needs" book with open shifts that people, including our regular agency nurses can look at and fill in the spots. If we have really big holes that need to be filled, the schedulers will go around and ask if anyone can adjust the schedules they originally requested. Most people are pretty flexible about it.

Nobody is ever mandated to do OT.

Yes, we get differential from 3p on.

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Specializes in ER.

Callouts are covered by people who volunteer to stay or people they call in...We 90% have a clinical mananger 24 hours a day so they will come out and do patient care if we can't get someone to cover...From 11p-7A 7days a week we have an on-call person that is equitably distributed throughout the RN staff on a rotational basis...they are the first call ins on night shift to fill a hole or if we are extra busy. We get $2.00/hr for on call. If we are slow in trauma we will have the trauma nurse float to help out until a trauma pt comes in, then it may not be necessary to cover the callout, depending on the acuity and number of patients we have, and how long we are short...As for our differentials, I forget off the top of my head, so I will have to get back to you on that one...Our diff starts from 3p and goes to 7A...we also have a weekend diff, but again, I'll have to get back to you on it...Also, for open shifts, we have an updated needs list that comes out about every 2 weeks that you can sign up for shifts...first come first serve...

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I too work in a Emergency room that has high turn over, low morale, and burnout. I wanted to clarify "call outs" are you talking about sick calls?? I work 7a-7p and the shift differential starts at 7p and it is 15%. The past 2-3 months we have been short 4 or 5 nurses a day, there is a sign up sheet located within the department. "Staff" are given 1st dibs then pool and registry nurses. We do NOT have mandatory overtime. The hospital is also giving incentive due to short staffing issues. We are given $7 extra an hour including time and a half. I do not participate in working overtime but it is decient money.

I work in an emergency room that covers call-offs with mandatory overtime, and in addition, when the schedule has open shifts--extra shifts are assigned when not volunteered for. This has resulted in HIGH TURNOVER, LOW MORALE and BURNOUT. In addition, we are reviewing shift differentials for evening, night and weekends. I live in Southeastern Ohio. In addition, we are wondering for the nurses who work 7a-7p if they get evening shift differential starting a 3pm?

So I am hoping that you will tell me 3 things :balloons: :

1. How does your emergency room handle call-off?

2. How are "open" shifts filled?

3. What are the shift differentials, and when do they take affect?

Your response is much appreciated! Joyce

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Specializes in ER, ICU, Infusion, peds, informatics.

i work in a fairly small er (about 100 pts/day), so the way we do things won't work in many of the larger ers. first, we will call around and see if anyone wants to come it. if not (which is usually the case), the charge nurse will go into staffing. then we will start closing down rooms. we have 12 rooms that are always open (never closed down), and we have pretty strict staffing of 1 nurse per 4 patients. so that means we can operate with 4 nurses (3 in staffing and one triage). we have seven other beds, plus fast track, that can be considered "expendable," and they are the ones that get closed down when staffing is tight. sometimes the day charge nurse will stay a while to close rooms down if staffing was ok on days and is bad for night shift, but no one is really forced to stay. we also don't have mandatory call, which i really think would be beneficial.

we do get really good shift differential: $4.50/hr for evenings, $4.00/hr for nights, and an additional $4.00/hr for weekends. however, we don't get extra money for coming in to help out when a shift is short.

open shifts are filled mostly by prn rns, or others who want the extra time. we no longer use agency (or travelers) at all, whch is pretty amazing considering that a year ago, day shift was almost entirely staffed by agency.

all of this sounds pretty good, doesn't it? funny thing is that we still have a high turn-over rate for staff.

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