i'm in the process of switching careers from dental hygiene to nursing...i have one more question of concern though...and, it's truly minor...and ridiculous actually...but, it's important to me..
my husband is twice my age :) so, our two weeks of vacation a year is extremely important to us...
is it easy to get let just say one week in July and one week in December vacation time?? i don't care if its paid or not really..my husband works ALL THE TIME..and , these two weeks are the only vacation we get together...
Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
while i don't understand what your husband's age has to do with the importance of vacations -- our vacations are important to all of us! -- i'll bite. different facilities have different vacation policies. it's unlikely you'll get the same week of july you're accustomed to, and almost certain you won't get december. but you will get two other weeks. if your husband is so old -- er, senior in his job -- he can probably switch his weeks to accommodate yours.
If your entitled to 4 vacation, are u allowed to take it all at once throughout the year (obviously not in December), or are u more likely to be forced to take 2 week maximum off until it accumulates to 4 weeks? Usually in other careers u can take all your vacation all together for a minimum of 3 weeks so that u are able to travel out of the country and enjoy, i do not know if nursing would be the same?
Depending on your facility, you may or may not be allowed to take it all off at once. You'll find that many hospitals have a policy that limits vacation requests to two weeks at a time. However, if you are requesting vacation in the off season (September-Novemeber or January-April) and your facility allows it, you may be able to take all of your time at once. If you want time off during peak months, you'll likely have to limit it to one or two weeks at a time. Some places don't allow any vacation requests over the winter holidays.
Also realize that not all facilities just give you four weeks of vacation per year. The most common policy is that employees accumulate PTO (paid time off) based on the hours that they work. For example, you might receive one vacation day for every two weeks that you work. You use the PTO for vacation time as well as sick time. Your PTO rolls over at the end of the year, but you always accrue more at the same rate. So say you use your last two weeks of vacation time in December- you do not get more vacation time until you've worked for several months and earned more. You don't automatically get more vacation time at the beginning of the year.
share your experiences of how likely are u to get long vacations at one go, also if thats not the case can u always get approved for unpaid leave of absent?
Again, whether or not you will be approved for more than two weeks vacation at one time depends on your facility's policy, your seniority, and when you are requesting the time off.
No, you usually cannot get approved for an unpaid leave of abscense. Again, this depends on your facility. But in the majority of places you cannot take time off unless you have available PTO saved. You cannot get approved for an unpaid leave of absence unless you have a medical reason for it.
Specializes in NICU, PICU, PCVICU and peds oncology.
jladha has also posted this same question in the Canadian Forum using Ontario as an example. Ashley, things are quite different in Canada as most hospitals and a large percentage of long term care facilities are unionized. Firstly, we have separate sick banks, vacation banks, statutory holiday time-back banks and personal leave banks. Generally speaking, collective agreements have no provision for allowing the employer to limit the amount of vacation a person takes at one time, as long as the person has the hours in their vacation bank. Seniority is the main determining factor in when a person may have vacation; planning is usually arranged following rules set out in the collective agreement. For example, the planner might be posted January 1, with a deadline for all vacation requests to be in by March 15 and all vacations finalized and the completed planner reposted by April 30. For the most part, only hours accrued in the preceding year are available for the coming year's vacation.
Just as an aside... I've been in my current job 9 1/2 years. I requested a week of vacation in May, which isn't "prime time" here and I have absolutely NO guarantee I'll get it because there were at least 6 people above me on the seniority list who asked for the same block of time. It will all depend on how the manager approves things. If she goes strictly on actual shifts scheduled during that block. I should be okay. If she goes strictly on her formula of no-more-than-three-off-in-a -24-hour-period, then I'm out of luck.
Thank you Ashley and Janfrn for both commenting back on my questions.
I have a better understanding now than i did before of what i am getting into to a point where i need to think more about if nursing is the right career choice for me. I really want to be a nurse, but my main passion is traveling; there is a big conflict here.
The PTO (paid time off) system in the US seems like a better option than that of the separate Leave bank we have in Canada, not only does it make things alot simpler but there is more flexibility.
It just saddens me to see how some hospital would forced u to take 1 week vacation max at a time, the least they could do is grant u two weeks continuously as with another profession in Canada. Also I can already see that there is a lot of complications that may arise with family. Like Janfrn said, u have no idea if your vacation request gets approved or not, u may be forced to go on separate vacation without your spouse or family, which i think beats the whole purpose.
Janfrn i wanted to know if u can request the management to give u vacation anytime throughout the year as long as its 2 weeks continuously, are they more likely to fulfill your request?
I am also curious when the vacation planner is posted on January 1st and u have until March 31 to send in your requests; are u able to see which months are in hot demand for vacation so u can work around it and choose vacation periods where your more likely to get 2 weeks off continuously? do u usually find situation where the management would simply force no vacations for new graduates and instead just pay them, that would be inhumane.
One more question, if you work part time as oppose to full time are u more likely to get able to take vacations time off?
Thank you guys so much for posting your replies, I am pretty sure it may have answered similar questions other new-members were also thinking. ^^
Specializes in NICU, PICU, PCVICU and peds oncology.
I have a better understanding now than i did before of what i am getting into to a point where i need to think more about if nursing is the right career choice for me. I really want to be a nurse, but my main passion is traveling; there is a big conflict here.
Several of my coworkers travel extensively every year. They're volunteers involved with the International Children's Heart Foundation and provide post-op cardiac nursing care to children in Third World countries. What they do is combine ad hoc vacation requests with shift trades to get enough time all at once to be able to go. (Ad hoc vacation requests are those that are not included in the annual vacation planner; they're not guaranteed the time off unless it's a very unpopular time for vacations, though.) Trading shifts with someone else is often a reasonable alternative as long as you don't mind working a LOT in a short period of time... and making some very short changeovers from night shift back to days.
The PTO (paid time off) system in the US seems like a better option than that of the separate Leave bank we have in Canada, not only does it make things alot simpler but there is more flexibility.
But then what happens if you break a leg and need six weeks of PTO? Then you have NO time left in your bank for vacation at all.
It just saddens me to see how some hospital would forced u to take 1 week vacation max at a time, the least they could do is grant u two weeks continuously as with another profession in Canada. Also I can already see that there is a lot of complications that may arise with family. Like Janfrn said, u have no idea if your vacation request gets approved or not, u may be forced to go on separate vacation without your spouse or family, which i think beats the whole purpose.
The collective agreement in Alberta really doesn't allow the employer to stipulate how much of your vacation you can take at a time. If you wanted the entire month of March off to go to someplace warm and you had the time in your bank, you could absolutely ask for it all at once. I usually break mine up and try to bookend my scheduled stretches off so that I maximize the time I'm actually away while using the minimum number of vacation hours. My rotation has a stretch of 12 days off in a row. If I take the Monday and Tuesday nights just before and the Monday day at the end as vacation, I will have 3 weeks off while only using 35 hours of my yearly allotment.
Janfrn i wanted to know if u can request the management to give u vacation anytime throughout the year as long as its 2 weeks continuously, are they more likely to fulfill your request?
If you ask for two weeks at a time when there aren't already the full quota of people off then there's no reason why you couldn't have it.
I am also curious when the vacation planner is posted on January 1st and u have until March 31 to send in your requests; are u able to see which months are in hot demand for vacation so u can work around it and choose vacation periods where your more likely to get 2 weeks off continuously? do u usually find situation where the management would simply force no vacations for new graduates and instead just pay them, that would be inhumane.
The planner has everybody on it. We all indicate on it the blocks of time we want for our vacation by drawing a line through the whole period, then mark the days we're actually scheduled to work with an "X". If the people at the top of the totem pole put in their preferences at the beginning then everyone below them can see what's left for them. That's how I know there are six other people who have asked for the same week in May as I have, and how I know that if the manager assigns vacation based on scheduled shifts and not sheer numbers, I should still get it. As for forcing no vacations for new grads and paying the time out instead, that's against labour laws and most collective agreements. Payout of vacation can only occur if it's a mutually agreeable choice. Our vacation year runs from May 1 to April 30, so a new grad who starts working right after graduation as a grad nurse will have nearly a full year of accrued vacation hours at their disposal for the following vacation year, but none for the year they're currently working in. How we get around that is that as long as the hours are in their bank when they want to take them, they can "borrow" from the coming year. So an example would be a new grad who starts working in June and has accrued 58 vacation hours by the end of January. This person wants to go skiing in Jasper for a week at the end of January, needing three shifts off and no one is already on vacation that week. Those 35 hours would be taken from the vacation hours in his/her bank for the following vacation year that starts in May... they've been earned already and can be taken if so desired. But then those three days aren't available for the coming vacation year. Clear as mud?
One more question, if you work part time as oppose to full time are u more likely to get able to take vacations time off?
Not necessarily. (I work part time.) But part time means fewer shifts in a given time period that will have to be covered. And more days in the month that you could trade shifts onto to extend your time off.
Thanks a lot guys u all have been very helpful~~^^
I usually break mine up and try to bookend my scheduled stretches off so that I maximize the time I'm actually away while using the minimum number of vacation hours. My rotation has a stretch of 12 days off in a row. If I take the Monday and Tuesday nights just before and the Monday day at the end as vacation, I will have 3 weeks off while only using 35 hours of my yearly allotment.
Janfrn you schedule is indeed very interesting your able to maximize your vacation time by using as little hours as possible. I am aware that some hospitals favor schedule such as 2D2N, 5 off 12 hour shifts, this way people work days,nights, and rotations weekends. i guess a person is able to maximize their vacation as well with a similar schedule, 5 days off + 4 days vacation + 5 days off = 2 week off at a time. I hope this these type of flexibility is common in the work place?
hey Janfrn; i just want to double check how far ahead are you allowed to book your vacation in advance in your case. Since your planner starts at 1st Jan 2012 to 31st March 2012, can you book a vacation anytime in the future from May 1st 2012 to April 31st 2013 if you have the vacation hours?
For vacation time, do hospitals consider religious reasons at all? Say, if you are Jewish and want/need to take Passover off, or if you are Catholic and want to take Good Friday off, for example.
In my area, many systems are owned/run by religious orders of various denominations, and the answer would be a resounding NO. A large portion of the staff where I work are Catholic as evidenced by nearly everyone with ashes on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday. If someone said they needed all Christmas and Easter off for religious reasons, the request would be met with eye-rolling.
Staffing is based on business need, not on religion, at least where I work.
Ruby Vee, BSN
17 Articles; 14,051 Posts
while i don't understand what your husband's age has to do with the importance of vacations -- our vacations are important to all of us! -- i'll bite. different facilities have different vacation policies. it's unlikely you'll get the same week of july you're accustomed to, and almost certain you won't get december. but you will get two other weeks. if your husband is so old -- er, senior in his job -- he can probably switch his weeks to accommodate yours.