Mandated cancellations

Nurses Safety

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My work just told us that they are now doing mandated cancellations. We were all hired for 40 hours and are now working 32 or less. The problem is , the census is at its all time low. Some are afraid of losing their jobs. Have any of you ever heard of mandated cancelations? And can you apply for temporary unemployment?

That's the thing, we just hired a bunch of new nurses and I was saying they won't stay because of no work. I did have the time to spare but now I used up all my days to be cancelled. I don't feel special because I'm " grandfathered in", and really do feel for the other nurses. I guess what this thread is coming down too, is that the economy plus the insurance kicking patients out before they are ready. We are suffering because of it and the fact our facility became greedy and opened up two other rehab facilities within the same locations.

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Specializes in Public Health, L&D, NICU.

Oh, yes, low census. That's what we called it, anyway. We kept a list and took it by turns, unless someone volunteered. But we were usually so busy and so overworked that we clamored for it. People would put low census requests on the white board all the time. At our sister hospital it really got out of control and nurses were working 8-12 hours a pay period and being cut the rest of the time.

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Specializes in Critical Care, Education.

Cancellation due to low census has been the norm for - basically forever - in my part of the country. It is done on a rotational basis. The only "seniority" relevant issue is the fact that each shift has to have a mix that includes sufficient experienced/charge nurses so you don't identically end up with all new grads or no one that is credentialed to perform a commonly required procedure.

Frequently, the full time staff will volunteer to be 'called off', but that is also done on a rotational basis in order to be fair.

It really sucks when staff has to begin consuming all their vacation time to maintain their salary. If the census changes appear to be permanent, the organization usually takes action to reduce the number of full-time staff positions.

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I work in a large teaching hospital which is unionized and we are calling off about 15-20 floor nurses a day right now. Our cancelling goes by seniority (per union contract) so most senior gets offered and it goes down the list. If you are the last on the list you have no choice in the matter and are cancelled. We also float to whatever floor may be short as well which can be very difficult because each of our floors are specialized. There are many newer nurses who have run out of PTO. If they have a vacation planned it will get cancelled. Really it sucks for everyone.

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Specializes in Orthopedic, LTC, STR, Med-Surg, Tele.

Our census has been very low recently and we are getting cancelled a lot also. I wish we could apply for unemployment but it would take about a month or two for them to get back to us. :no: Mandated cancellation just sounds awful.

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PACU.

We cancel on occasion, people are more than happy to take vacation time but sometimes we do get to mandatory. We only cancel 4 hour blocks routinely and this is the same when we mandate. We have a log of who has been mandatory cancelled. Usually there are people who haven't been mandated and then we go by seniority.

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Specializes in Pedi.

This is definitely the norm. My hospital called it "staffing to demand." If we were overstaffed, people were called and offered the day off based on the most recent time they had taken the day off. That was your "date". The person who'd had the longest time elapse since taking the day (voluntarily) was offered the day off first. First priority went to nurses who were willing to move their hours to a day when we were short staffed (because they'd rather not pay anyone the PTO), second priority to those who were willing to take PTO (because even though they were still paying you for not working, it was 12 hrs that they didn't have to pay you for at a later date). One of the few things I liked about the CNO at my old hospital was that she was opposed to forced PTO. That didn't mean that individual managers didn't use that and my floor was so miserable that it was rare to not find anyone who would be willing to stay home. The bad part was you were canceled but then put "on-call". So it's Monday morning and there's only 10 patients on the floor at 7am, but then they tell you "you can have off till 11 but then you might need to come in then or at 3pm." So it's really only useful if you want just a few hours more sleep. I almost never took it and got a very, very nice PTO cash out check when I left that job.

You can't apply for unemployment because you're not unemployed.

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