low census, cancell that deprives nurses of their livlihooding shifts

[jam2007]

I am working my 1st job in a community hospital and I got a phone call asking if I wanted to be cancelled and be on re-call. I had no idea what staffing was talking about. Well it seems if the census is low, they call people to cancel them and we have to take vacation time or no pay. They are mandating time off on some floors. I was reading an article from the Mass. nursing association (they help w/unionization) and there take on it was that it is like a "rolling layoff" depriving nurses of their livelihood.

Just wondering if this happens at your facility and what your thoughts are about MNA's view. (our hosp. isn't union)

[Bluehair]

Yup - I was on call a LOT the last 2 months due to low census. 4 months ago they were paying double time and having a hard time getting any takers, because we had been soooo busy for so many months. Comes with the territory. We get paid $4.50/hr while on call, then time and a half for the first 4 hours if we get called in. If you do get called in, it can be to your benefit. (example: On call 2 hours, get called in and work 10, you end up with more money than if you went in at 7). It doesn't always work that way, but I have had shifts where it did.

I, too, am one of those who doesn't mind going back to bed or having a second cup of coffee and logging on here, lol! As long as it doesn't happen too many days in a row...

[luv2yoga]

Interesting to see all the different practices. I was called off a lot over the summer and I took it every time. Working nights this first year has been incredibly hard. As of Sunday, I'm on Days and so, so glad.

Anyway, it's always an option for us to take call off, but if we don't take it, we may be floated or have to work as an aide. My unit also over-hired because we had 7 people pregnant and I think they didn't expect all of them to come back, and full-time. But they did. So now we're overstaffed and the census has been persistently low. We used to have what we called the "BOC" list, which was backup on-call, where two nurses would sign up to be on call for every shift. If they called you in, you got time and a half and it happened a lot. It was a nice way of doing it, you could pick your days and knew what to expect. Now we don't need it because people are being called off every single shift. Hopefully that will change with the winter coming.