On call schedule

[pjccequals]

We are a home health agency that some nurses unhappy with our on call scheduling system. Currently we have one nurse who picks up most overnight call, about 50% of themonth. The rest of days are left to be filled and a supervisor will email out the dates, you can choose whatever dates are left. Then if there are holes to be filled after, the supervisor will fill based off of who was the last to take call and the number of times you took call the prior month. I dont feel this is unfair, but some do, and we formed a committee to make it more fair. Any suggestions?

[Eleven011]

When I worked Home Health, we had about 7 of us to share call. We went a week at a time. So I was on call from 8am Monday morning until the following Monday morning every 7th week. There was a calendar printed out for the whole year, so if you had a special date or what not, you had plenty of time to switch with someone. Even at the last minute - say I was sick or had a sick kid - I could easily call and ask someone to cover a few hours for me.

[KelRN215, BSN, RN]

When I worked in a home health agency, we split call between 6 of us. One nurse wanted to do Mon-Thurs every week so the rest of us rotated the weekends.

In my current job, we do call like the previous poster. There are 5 of us so we do a week at a time- 8:30 am Monday to 8:30 am the following Monday- and we rotate q 5 weeks. We sometimes switch full weeks, sometimes just weekends.