Inventive Staffing - Outpatient clinic?

[opal6779, BSN]

Hi all, I work in a busy OBGYN clinic. We have about 12 nurses, not all are full time though. Maybe only 5-6 FT. We have been asked to come up with some inventive ways that we could staff the office so that people have more time at home in case we need to homeschool/school from home our kids initially. We have mon-fri hours but are open evenings on Tues and Thursday till 7pm. My only thought was 12 hr shifts on our long days. Anyone else have any ideas??

[Nunya, BSN]

You could have more and later evening hours and the nurses with kids to homeschool could work then. I'm sure they'd love that (LOL) and of course you'd have to get the providers to sign off on this. Or you could do split shifts, which no one would like. Or you could have the homeschooling folks be working T-Th-F for example which would be 12 hour days (T, Th) but that wouldn't be enough hours for the FT folks, so they'd have to pick up hours elsewhere, maybe later in the day after "school hours". I could play around with it but I would need to know the status of each person ie; 1. FT or PT and how many hours that is for each 2. hours they need off 3. number nurses you need to be there at different times. Is it 5 (or whatever) nurses all the time or are there slower hours where 4 can be staffed? This doesn't include the hours they CAN'T work because they don't have childcare. For example, if you had all the school kids' parent (SKP) work till 7 EVERY T and Th (I'm assuming it's rotational now) they would have a harder time getting sitters if needed than getting a sitter once every 2 weeks. Stuff like that would be nice to be looked at but realistically it may not be possible, so they'd have to choose between being off for more "school hours" or being off more evenings. No matter what, if FT people want to be home till 3 every day let's say, and start work at 3:30 there's no way they can get their hours in with the clinic hours at this point. And it goes without saying you can't discriminate against those who don't have kids to homeschool. The ones to have the less desirable hours (split shifts, evening hours) in my opinion should be those who want/need to be at home for their kids.

I could play with it but I would want to know that everyone is committed to working a crap schedule cuz that's what it may come down to....

Edit: the other option is to close 1-2 days during the week and be open on weekends, but again you'd have to get the providers to sign off on that. This would probably be nice for patients though as then they could come on weekends when they aren't schooling THEIR kids!