On Call

If you are on-call then you need to be paid for those "on-call hours". My experience with nursing homes is that they don't care if they destroy someone's health by having them work 16 hours a day seven days a week. It's not safe for the patients and they could care less if you get adequate sleep or not. I had begged and pleaded for them to stop calling me for overtime. They never listened. So I stopped answering my phone period. I told friends to leave me a message because I would not be answering my phone anymore period. That's the only thing that worked for me.

I have my work place listed in my contacts so when they ring me for overtime, I can choose whether I want to take the call or not

I mean, that depends on your position. My DON is on call 24/7 and comes in when needed. But so do I. We just get the next day off.

I was a DON for several years. I was on call 24/7. As far as coming in, you have to know when enough is enough. If you work and are too tired and cause harm, you will find yourself alone in front of the BON. Your facility management will say that you should have told them you were too tired and you will face the consequences alone. You have to be your own advocate. That being said, your facility may choose to discipline you for not coming in if your on call. In my experience, if nurses switched off with me as the DON and took call, I would not have them work shift after shift. If we kept having call ins someone else would have to go in, or I would cover it. We worked as a team.