I work in a hospital where the room are broken down into separate "zones" and each zone has it's own assigned phone that never changes. In other words the phone for each zone is always the same. Now sometimes other departments or Drs call and are transferred to the appropriate nurse's phone.
Most of the nurses take their phones with them at lunch time (and probably would on breaks if they took them). I know they get interrupted at lunch because I often transfer calls to their phones. My questions is this; would you take your phone with you at these times and would you expect to be paid for that lunch time. My thinking is that if you take the phone with you and are interrupted you should be paid for that time. I will be working as a nurse here shortly and I have no intention of taking my phone with me on breaks and lunches. To me that is my time and I get to chose whether or not to take the phone with me.
The nurse who is coordinating the floor in the OR department has really no choice but to take the phone with them to lunch. I feel sorry for whoever is doing this role because they have to run trauma and elective theatres and deal with a lot of BS from surgeons. They cannot eat their lunch in peace. It would be impossible for them to hand to phone to someone else because there would be WAY too much information to hand over to someone else for just half an hour.
Scrubby
1,313 Posts
The nurse who is coordinating the floor in the OR department has really no choice but to take the phone with them to lunch. I feel sorry for whoever is doing this role because they have to run trauma and elective theatres and deal with a lot of BS from surgeons. They cannot eat their lunch in peace. It would be impossible for them to hand to phone to someone else because there would be WAY too much information to hand over to someone else for just half an hour.