On-call hospice nurse

nightnurse831 · Nov 4, 2016

I work as a hospice night on call RN for a non profit org. My schedule is 5pm to 8am friday to friday (7 on and 7 off). We also cover a large geographical area (patients can be more than 60 miles apart) with about 160 census and climbing. I get paid $42 an hour for the 15 hours that I am on call which is pretty much 105 hours per pay period. I only get a few calls a night but of course there are those days. I make visits on average 1 -2 a night. I have a back up LVN who I use for geographical advantages. I also do admits every now and then but I do not get any bonus since they pay me regular amount of money per hour even if I am sleeping for most of the time. If for example I have to go out after 8am I will still get my regular $42 an hour except if my "actual" work hours (hours that I was actually working like making visits, charting, triaging) exceed 8 for the night then I get paid OT. But that has never happened in the 2 years I have been a night nurse.

CHoytRN · Jun 26, 2017

Greetings call nurses. Can you share if you receive a shift differential for taking call after hours?

holland08lvn · Aug 5, 2018

I know this is an old thread, but its been allot of great information. I just accepted an offer for a weekend on-call job. 7pm fri - 8am mon. I don't know what the census is yet, but I get paid hourly, OT, and DT. no extra for visits or calls, no differential, and no admits. It sounds like the pay ends up being great after overtime. It looks like ill be home based and working an area roughly 15 miles in each direction. Ive been trying to get into hospice for a year or so, and Im excited. Although Im not new to hospice cases, I am new to the structure of this job. I don't know the ins and outs, the questions to ask, or what I should be expecting. Any advice would be appreciated.

cargalrn · Aug 13, 2018

I'd like to update this thread. Any on-call hospice nurse is out there? What do you go out for? I understand there's some routine visits and admissions. You would go out for deaths, intractable pain, but what other issues would you go out for? Would you go out for a skin tear? If a patient is in a facility and you triaged and felt the situation was under control would you still go out for that situation?

cargalrn · Aug 14, 2018

Hi hospice on call nurses I have a question I just started that on call position and I am not clear on what I need to go out for. ITriage myself. Should I go out for a skin tear in a facility?

CrochetNurse154 · Aug 15, 2018

Hi hospice on call nurses I have a question I just started that on call position and I am not clear on what I need to go out for. ITriage myself. Should I go out for a skin tear in a facility?

I highly suggest you speak to your manager about their expectations of you for visits. Personally I would not go out to a facility at 2am for only a skin tear. However, I would be scheduling a routine visit for the next morning for the patient to be assessed. The expectation for our company is that all new skin issues that are reported are assessed within 24hr.

Famila Infinity · Nov 30, 2019

FOR EVERYONE THAT GETS PAID ON CALL SALARY

I work for a hospice company who has 1 chaplain 1 Don 1 Sw I aide and currently 1 RN to do ON CALL (me). so heres my situation. I get paid salary to do ON CALL i do triage and visits if the patients need it. i work Monday - Monday 5pm to 830am without a day off. And they currently dont have a case manager so the DON does routine visits . Im starting to get thrown 5-7 visits a weekend because the DON cant seem them all. They refuse to pay me extra as PRN. And they expect me to go to IDT every other weekend to talk about the PT ive seen and told it’s mandatory i be there. ive worked on call for many places before as 7 days on/7 days off, or just weekends. But this job i recently started working at i feel they are taking advantage of me. Before they started telling me to do routine visits they had a case manager but decided to let her go because she was changing the visits around. ( i personally think thats what case managers should be allowed to do). so i am having to do the help without getting compensation. so my question to you is if there are laws that allow this. Does it even seem fair? and what do u recommend i do.. thanks

pmabraham, BSN, RN · Nov 30, 2019

Personally, I don't think I would ever take a salary position as a hospice nurse. There's too much room for being abused. It's not fair, but if you took the position, it's not illegal. I worked in IT for ~30 years before becoming a hospice nurse and when you are salary, the general expectation is for workers to put in ~45 hours per week. My recommendation is to avoid salary-based positions... at least as a hospice nurse.

Famila Infinity · Nov 30, 2019

i used to work for the same company as a case manager monday thru friday and on call was paid extra at 210 week to take call at 76k salary. but i quit for personal reasons and they decided to call me to come back as on call salary. they cut my pay to 65k salary promising to go back at 76k once our census hit 20 patients which we are 8 short. but as i explained before they are wanting me to wear many hats on top of working everyday without a day off. and i cant help but feel they are taking advantage. lmk what you think ? thx

MelNTX76 · Oct 22, 2021

I’ve been doing 7on 7 off for a specific company for over a year now. I’ve been in hospice for over 5 years and a RN for over 15. The last 3 months have been hard and we’ve lost most of our team to burn out and crappy upper management. In the last 3 months I’ve been scheduled to do supervisory visits (3-4 a night M-Th) and I was OK with helping out the team. But now that we have hired 2 new CMs for a total of 3 and our DON myself and the other on call are still being given sup visits. We have a census of 55 (with admissions on case by case due to staffing) so there is no reason why these sups cannot be done by the CMs. In my 5 years in hospice I’ve only ever done on call and have never had to do sup visits unless I was picking up PRN work. Anyone else do sup visits as a norm for on call?

Olivelove20 · Oct 31, 2021

On 10/22/2021 at 5:27 PM, MelNTX76 said:

I’ve been doing 7on 7 off for a specific company for over a year now. I’ve been in hospice for over 5 years and a RN for over 15. The last 3 months have been hard and we’ve lost most of our team to burn out and crappy upper management. In the last 3 months I’ve been scheduled to do supervisory visits (3-4 a night M-Th) and I was OK with helping out the team. But now that we have hired 2 new CMs for a total of 3 and our DON myself and the other on call are still being given sup visits. We have a census of 55 (with admissions on case by case due to staffing) so there is no reason why these sups cannot be done by the CMs. In my 5 years in hospice I’ve only ever done on call and have never had to do sup visits unless I was picking up PRN work. Anyone else do sup visits as a norm for on call?

I worked 7 on/7 off in the past and never once did sups visits. I agree w/you - that is something the CM's or day shift nurses should be covering. If they are seeing their patients on a regular basis they should be doing the sup visits as a part of their documentation anyway.

pmabraham, BSN, RN · Oct 31, 2021

As a day RN CM, the company policy is that we do supervisor visits every visit when there are CNA's assigned to the case.