Incentives for Heart Duty?

[dahob3]

Heart duty at our hospital is tough. Lots of long days, lots of call, and demanding surgeons. We never have enough people on the team as they feel it is not worth the sacrifices.

We have gone to our administrator asking for additional incentives to keep us on the team and attract new talent. She doesn't want multi- tiered wage/benefit systems so she has asked us for ideas on how we can incentivize people to come back.

Outside of raises, bonuses, monetary stuff, we are stuck.

Any ideas that we could take to the boss that would get people to sign on??

TIA.

D

[vamedic4, EMT-P]

sounds like your administrator needs to wake the heck up and get with the program. it all boils down to this...gimmicks don't work. "come sing on to work in the or for a chance to win a vw beetle"..gimme a break!! how about hey or nurses, we appreciate you...here's an extra 200 dollars for your time in addition to whatever you made yesterday.

it boils down to this...money, and the happiness that money can bring. you work your butt off beside someone who's being paid tens of thousands of dollars for his time...and rightly so, but you all deserve more than what you get.

just tell them that people truly aren't interested in it unless they can benefit from it...and everyone can benefit from more money.

or you could try this (if you have a pto/vacation time system). for every hour i do ot, i get an hour of vacation time. that way they're not paying you outright...but you're benefitting because vacation usually accrues on a fractional basis. you make out in the end and they only have to pay up when you use it.

just a thought.

vamedic4

yaaay, i fixed the car!!

oh yeah.... welcome to allnurses.com!!!

[dahob3]

Money talks. I agree with you.

I too had some thoughts about vacation time. The only problem with that is that we would be giving out more vacation time and yet we are already short staff now. Maybe after we fill in the gaps, that option could be broached.

Our problem is that the administrator doesn't want to selectively pay some people more than others. Personally, I believe in the laws of supply and demand..if we are short, then we need to make it attractive enough somehow that the supply opens up.

[sunnyjohn]

Money to encourage you to sign up...Extra Vacation time to recover from the stress of the job (nasty surgeons, OT, etc)...

If hearts is your money maker, have a core team. Still train EVERYONE with a pulse to the auxilliary team. Every staff member- scrub, circulator and anesthesia tech must work at minimum two days a month in hearts. That way you boss isn't showing favoritism and the load is shared.

OR

If your heart duty is really a stinker only assign the core team folks to hearts three days a week. That way you'll prevent overload and burnout. Doing the same thing every day around a bunch of grumps while seeing your fellow employees enjoying their work would depress everyone.

[Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN]

Extra vacation time and extra money on the hour should be automatic for call time and stress like that.

How about cushy call rooms, or an alloted dollar amount for the cafeteria?

And it sounds like administration should have a chat with the surgeons.